Larry Page's startups working on flying cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories <comment><USER2> Helicopters and small planes already exist. We might have autonomous helicopters and small planes in the future, but flying car concept is flawed and not because it's hard to build one.

\- Preflight checks and flight safety. Larry should first build normal small aircraft that can do without constant manual checks before flight. This is actually good subgoal to work with even without flying cars in mind. Reliable infrastructure that checks and calibrates instruments so reliably that you don't need manual checks would be revolution in aerospace. Just walking from your car into your future Cessna-Android and flying off would be sci-fi for aviators.

\- Energy consumption. No matter how energy efficient the engines are, hovering and short takeoffs use lots of energy. Flying with small wings with little lift is equivalent to driving monster trucks in full power. You don't want flying becoming everyday phenomenon until we have abundance of carbon free energy.

\- Noise and safety regulations, aviation regulations over urban areas. Flying cars are not happening in the suburbs or anyone where lots of people live. In the meantime try to get new helicopter landing sites approved in your neighborhood. If you have to take car to your flying car hangar, just have a small plane instead. Or walk to a buss station.

<comment><USER3> > Preflight checks and flight safety. Larry should first build normal small > aircraft that can do without constant manual checks before flight.

Omg, this. The amount of checks required for any sort of aircraft is ridiculous. A lot of it involves button pushing and checking status. This could be automated.

For instance, for a cessna 150:

STARTING ENGINE Mixture – RICH Carb heat – COLD Prime – AS REQUIRED Master switch -- ON Beacon Light – ON Throttle – OPEN 1/8" Prop Area – CLEAR Ignition – START Oil Pressure – CHK Radio – ON/SET Transponder – ON / STBY Wing Flaps – UP Mixture – LEAN 1 INCH READY TO TAXI

Most of these things could be set automatically.

<comment><USER4> The examples you gave take no more than 30 seconds. Sure, FADEC can eliminate most of them, but they're quick.

Other examples–checking the oil, the tank sumps, the intake, the tires, the flap tracks, the rudder bolt(s), the wing tips, the tailwheel springs, etc.–are the stuff that software largely can't replace, and are the more time- consuming part of taking off.

Put another way, the latest fighter jets and commercial heavies still have significant visual preflights.

<comment><USER3> > The examples you gave take no more than 30 seconds. Sure, FADEC can > eliminate most of them, but they're quick.

Sure. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the engine section as the example.

In the context of this thread, way more than that is needed.

> Put another way, the latest fighter jets and commercial heavies still have > significant visual preflights.

And that is fine. The stakes are high, the plane itself is much more complex and placed in high demand, plus they can hire staff.

<comment><USER5> The "staff" you mention that does the walk-around of the major commercial airliner is/are also the person(s) who will be piloting the plane, IIRC.

<comment><USER6> I just flew on an a320 and watched the plane taxi to the gate. Someone on the ground crew in an orange vest walked around the plane and did a visual inspection using a flashlight. At no point did someone from the flight crew leave the plane.

<comment><USER5> Curious as to what airline and at what airport? Usually pre-flight is before the plane taxis "from" the gate not when it arrives "at" the gate.

<comment><USER6> Are you referring to only the first flight of the day?

A plane lands, taxis to the gate. Passengers disembark, the plane gets cleaned and refueled, people on the ground checked it out, new passengers board (me), and it taxis from the gate. At no point did the pilots leave the airplane to "walk-around".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just emailed the people at Moller this week asking them what the biggest challenge in making a flying car was. Their reply was:

Thanks for reaching out to Moller International. Your question is a good one, with a multitude of answers. For now, I'll explain 3 of the biggest factors. First, there is a lot of FAA and government regulations regarding aircraft. Airworthiness certification is a lengthy process, and depending on the level at which a company wishes to test, operate, and potential sell their aircraft, the process can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. Second, as stated previously, time is a major factor not only for development, but also testing, marketing, etc. In aviation, there are no "unimportant" parts at 10,000 ft. Safety is always a top priority throughout the entire process. Third, and finally, funding. Companies like Moller International depend greatly on their investors and supporters to keep the lights on. Until there is a product being sold, and cash being brought in regularly, a company must depend on some other source of funding. Aircraft programs are not known to be easy and cheap; these programs are some of the more expensive ones out there, especially in the private sector. With all of this said, all of us here at Moller International are working hard to ensure the latter two have as minimal an impact as possible. We have been working in cooperation with the FAA to get things going as quickly and safely as possible. Let me know if you have any other questions.

<comment><USER8> And of course the #1 reason: developing an economical, practical flying car is very hard within the constraints set by physics.

<comment><USER5> Well even if it works the #2 reason is you have to have a qualified person to fly it.

One quick glance between US Driving Regulations and Tests versus FAA Pilot Certification programs reveals the two are very divergent. I've yet to see an IFR-conditions capable car. Not saying it isn't possible, but just spitballing the technical and competency thresholds here.

<comment><USER9> I don't know the extent of their tests but it's interesting to see this in the news yesterday

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/08/flying- robo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/08/flying-robot-taxi- to-start-trials-in-las-vegas/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As long as there's the FAA involved, flying cars are a stupid idea.

They are shitty cars if they're any good at being airplanes, and they're underperforming and over-priced airplanes just because they can somewhat function as a car. Now, if Larry Page's flying car company is also lobbying to gut the FAA's ability to regulate his creation, that's a whole other can of worms.

I don't think personal flight devices are a bad idea, which is why I'm working on my own. Flying cars are so contradictory in construction and purpose that I can't help but get really peeved at any praise directed toward the endeavor. There are more factors than simply "can this 4 wheeler get airborne" to keep at top of mind.

Good luck getting a reasonably priced AME to keep the thing airborne.

> _But better materials, autonomous navigation systems, and other technical > advances have convinced a growing body of smart, wealthy, and apparently > serious people that within the next few years we'll have a self-flying car > that takes off and lands vertically—at least a small, electric, mostly > autonomous commuter plane._

The latter half of that sentence is plausible. Flying cars are not. Sorry.

<comment><USER10> Flying cars would be a product for the world market. The FAA only controls a small part of that airspace.

<comment><USER5> Maybe the .001% of people in the world market, and even then, of those people, approximately a much smaller amount would be capable of flying such a vehicle properly. They might be financially able to purchase, but will they be competent enough not to crash it within the first month? I seem to recall Dodge Vipers being notorious for being crashed within the first _week_ of ownership due to lack of proper training (which was subsequently provided in advance of delivery IIRC). We're talking _airplanes_ here.

Obviously the FAA doesn't control global airspace, as evidenced by a Malaysia Air passenger jet flying over an active combat zone and being shot out of the sky by a SAM. Sometimes the FAA does good work. Sometimes not, but it's definitely the foremost "authority" in aviation.

<comment><USER11> The article implies that these vehicles would be autonomous.

<comment><USER5> It might imply that some would be autonomous, but that's not a genuine "flying car" now is it? It's an "autonomous passenger transport pod" that could describe anything from a hyperloop to an automated self-propelled wheelchair. All this dancing around to try and make it seem like the idea isn't a fool's errand is interesting, I will grant that.

<comment><USER12> You're associating "car" with "something a homeowner can regularly control." I associate "car" more with "a personal vehicle."

I'd rather high speed chunks of metal not be under individual control, personally. Road or air.

<comment><USER5> That's fine, you can use whatever inaccurate terms you'd like but I won't share that approach.

Personally, having grown up in an aviation family and being a studied gear- head, I simply don't share your confidence that individual control is inferior to automation at the root. In fact, I think until AI is comparable to the human brain, arguing that automation and programming is better is wrong; moreover it's unsuitable for a conversation regarding powered flight is irresponsible. There are simply no technological systems which have proven themselves trustworthy - thus far, I concede - to being a replacement for the human brain and synapses.

<comment><USER13> We have machine operated lifts and trains, almost self driving cars, aircraft autopilots and having witnessed my own efforts at flying a plane I think a computer could quite likely do a safer job.

<comment><USER5> Oh really? Because there's a bunch of Air France wreckage just North of South America regarding a computer fuck-up that wasn't properly ajudicated by the pilots in command, which would have saved the passengers (as it had in other instances where the pilots saved the plane). That's just a high-profile one by pilots who were easily more qualified than you or I to be in charge of a major airliner.

[http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/avi...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/aviation.aspx)

<comment><USER14> It crashed because the pilots didn't know what they needed to know. That is not a computer fuck-up. Pretty bad example to pick when you're arguing _against_ autopilot being superior to humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may _adversely affect the performance_ and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site.

Yeah, ok Bloomberg.

<comment><USER16> I'm on mobile, not using an ad blocker, and I still got this message... really Bloomberg...?

Also by performance being affected perhaps they are referring to the 5 extra secondtheys make you wait.

<comment><USER17> Same here. And of course the ads themselves bog down the page so that it's hard to read even after their popup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Every time I see an article on flying cars, I can't help but be reminded of an old IBM commercial[0] from 2000.

Deliciously ironic considering it represented the fact that mainstream culture had all but written off the idea entirely.

[0] [https://youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo)

<comment><USER19> More disappointingly, we still can't just walk out of a store with goods and have it charge us. That said, the idea of all the products having RF things on them would be ultra creepy, so I'm guessing that's the limiting factor.

<comment><USER20> Well, in some stores, RFID on all products already exists.

Especially as they were originally added to prevent theft, and are now kinda for free, it's quite cheap to add that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What problems do flying cars solve? I know it looks cool but is there some huge thing that would get solved with this?

<comment><USER22> Cars and trucks are relegated to the 2d grid of streets. They consume an inordinate amount of space, and require that all travel occur in series down a road. When an accident occurs, this disrupts the flow of traffic down that path, and also frequently disrupts the flow of surrounding roads as drivers seek alternate routes around the problem. Roads wear down over time, and require maintenance to repair. Salt and chemicals placed on roads to melt ice and snow can have adverse impacts on the local water tables and have other negative ecological impacts.

Air-travel doesn't have those same constraints. Travel could be more point-to- point. An accident by one or two aircraft doesn't need to inhibit the travel of all other crafts flying in the general vicinity. Air space, while regulated and crowded in some urban areas, is largely under-utilized and expansive. It's also not a space that is shared with foot traffic, so pedestrians could reclaim some of the space currently allocated to roads since the volume of vehicular traffic would likely drop.

That's not to say that personal air travel doesn't introduce an entire set of new problems and challenges - it absolutely does, but there are many problems that cars and roads cause which air-travel avoids by-design.

Think of air-travel in the context of this cartoon:

[http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/24948/to-a- pedestri...](http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/24948/to-a-pedestrian-a- roads-a-tiny-space-with-danger-just-beside/)

<comment><USER23> This doesn't solve the parking problem. Sure, you get to work a bit faster but now you need to put that thing down. In a downtown area where there's a major price premium for parking. Getting to work in 10 minutes instead of 30 is going to be attractive and that'll raise parking demand, but there's only going to be so much parking available. Tearing down profitable office buildings to make flying car parking lots will be cost prohibitive and I doubt Joe Officeworker is interested in a $500+ a month flying car space.

Its also worth mentioning that none of these proposed designs are vtol, so you'll need a real runway to land or take off.

Worse, how do you leave the massive underground parking lot? Drive to the street then somewhere you can safely lift off? Now you have to wait to taxi to the proper runway or lift off zone or whatever these things will ultimately be allowed to use. Double worse, now we're less invested in solutions that actually work and don't require massive parking spaces like public trans via light rail, e-bikes, traditional bikes, etc.

There's a reason why the personal plane never took off. I'm pretty bearish about the flying car concept, even if all the technical and regulatory issues are easily solved (hint: they wont be) there's still pricing and safety issues on top of the parking problem. Oh and 9/11 is fresh in everyone's minds. Can you imagine anyone approving these things flying near the skyscrapers we work in? I suspect that if that these things catch on, they'll be like the Concorde. A toy for rich people in a hurry but with so many strict regulations and limitations that it'll ultimately be infeasible in the long run.

If Page and Google have shown anything, they're poor futurists outside of the information realm. When it comes to hardware, they're batting very poorly. They let Valve and Oculus take the VR crown, they let Musk take space tourism and electric cars, they let Jobs take the first mass market smartphone, let Amazon take the e-book crown, etc.

<comment><USER22> "Tearing down profitable office buildings to make flying car parking lots will be cost prohibitive and I doubt Joe Officeworker is interested in a $500 a month flying car space."

Rooftops have been used for ages as landing pads for helicopters. I don't see why you couldn't do the same for these. And the article mentions adoption of the uber-model of non-ownership, so it's not like you'd need a parking lot of these sitting idly at the workplace for end-of-day. They'd come and go on- demand.

<comment><USER24> You could have the tesla self park / pick up feature. It drops you off and then Flys off some here where there is much space. Then you just call it back when you ready to leave.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like a lot of wasted energy if that thing has to fly any reasonable distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is encouraging. There's no fundamental problem with building a "flying car"; all sorts of strange VTOL craft were built in the 1950s. Many of them ended up in the Hiller Aviation Museum on 101 in San Carlos, CA.

The main problems with VTOL are stability, engine cost, and fuel consumption/range. Pure-thrust lift requires enormous power. Most of the successful pure-thrust VTOLs are jet fighters, which are mostly engine. The Harrier and the F-35 are examples.

Jet engines are expensive, and they don't get much cheaper below 6-passenger bizjet size. This is why general aviation still uses props. A lot of effort has gone into cheaper jet engines, but without much success. (Yes, there are large model aircraft jet engines, which is what the Flyboard Air uses. They're good for a few hundred hours, not the 10,000 hours between overhauls of aviation jet engines.)

Electric VTOL is going to be interesting. There are lots of electric drones, after all. Engine power to weight is good. Siemens has a water-cooled electric aircraft engine in test.

Battery energy density sucks. NASA is talking about aircraft where there's a gas turbine or two driving a generator, with lots of electric props. This could work out. Meanwhile, until the battery situation improves, you can build short-ranged flying cars. There's a cute little one out of China, apparently intended to get China's rich and powerful around Beijing's traffic jams.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's great seeing a strong push toward aviation as a superior method of transportation. One of the side effects will be people gradual spreading out, away from huge city congestion, which is largely set up due to our transportation. It will enable us to live more in tune with nature, while not giving up the conveniences of having everything we need within short distance. I touched upon this in a blog post: [https://medium.com/@eblanshey/the-world- is-undergoing-massiv...](https://medium.com/@eblanshey/the-world-is- undergoing-massive-change-and-ive-never-been-so-excited-in-my-life- cca5666827f0#.bst1jq2ox)

<comment><USER28> I disagree. Most people do not want to live more in tune with nature when it comes to living in it. They have very little interest in immersing themselves in nature outside of an occasional hike or camping trip. That's made exceptionally clear by how people actively choose to live and the things they choose not to do. There is no great pent-up demand for telecommuting, a very small percentage of the working population wants to do it.

Cities are vastly superior to spreading out, in nearly every possible way. Cities are far more efficient. Cities produce far greater innovation due to concentration of ideas and the knock-on effects; generally speaking you get a multiplier for each person you add to a city. Cities are far more vibrant in every regard except for nature, that includes art, science, fashion, social, lifestyle, networking, work, access to resources and public institutions.

<comment><USER29> On the other hand, cities have higher crime rates, more pollution, more noise, less space, and higher cost of living.

Have you ever lived in an apartment building? Have you ever had noisy neighbors and wished you lived in a detached house with a spacious yard? Have you ever been awakened by a truck's backup beeper at 5 AM? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live in a city where a riot takes place, or a terrorist attack, or a public health epidemic?

There is a big gap between "living in tune with nature" (whatever that means to whoever reads it) and living in a city. Some people prefer living in less densely populated areas. Some people prefer living in the wilderness. Some people prefer living in skyscrapers, stacked on top of each other like sardines.

Personally, I think that the more people are packed together in small areas, the less happy people are. People are happier when they have space of their own, giving them privacy--not just in terms of being hidden from sight, but in terms of having their space not being intruded upon by noise, pollution, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Related is this one-man drone by a Chinese company which should being test flights in Nevada:

      http://www.ehang.com/news/146.html

"Drone" because the on board computer handles all the flying (just pick a destination).

<comment><USER31> I am so curious about how this Ehang 146 thing will pan out.

If it does really work, I think it is one of the best idea I have ever seen !

<comment><USER32> When we do eventually get working personal VTOL vehicles (let's call them something that is not not flying car), they will look something like this. Maybe with different characteristics for body shape and rotor arrangement, but definitely with gimbaled electric motors and with no wings or control surfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We'll all be happier and healthier and have more money for other stuff if we build our cities around walking, biking, and shared transit. Suburbs = unhealthy, inefficient, unhappy (it has been studied - look it up don't just comment reply "I love the suburbs and my driving my Model X everywhere").

<comment><USER29> I contend that people are happier and healthier where the population density is lower, resulting in less crime, less pollution, less noise, lower cost of living, more space, more privacy, etc.

If you want to live in big buildings, packed together like sardines, unable to escape from the noise of your neighbors and everything that goes on in the city outside the window, more power to you. But don't presume to say that everyone else will be happier if they would just do what you prefer.

<comment><USER34> The problem is that usually you still have to commute to work. Living far away from jobs means a long, unhappy commute. The unhappiness caused by long commutes is well researched - look it up if you like. People compromise and live somewhere in between, which often means the worst of both worlds.

Contrary to what you say, dense cities can be quiet and have isolated private space. Look at the vast single-family-home suburbs of Tokyo. The population density is high even without large buildings, and you can live without a car easily (if desired), but you have your own house with a garden on a quiet, secluded street in a safe neighborhood all within walking distance of the train that can take you downtown. Not particularly cheap or spacious, though. The noisy, crime-riddled, no-privacy-at-all hellish city you describe is common, but it's not the only possibility.

What the sibling comment says is true about social interaction in cities as well. Living in the city people have more friends, more sexual partners, attend more events, and interact more with strangers. For some that is a plus.

<comment><USER29> > The problem is that usually you still have to commute to work. Living far > away from jobs means a long, unhappy commute. The unhappiness caused by long > commutes is well researched - look it up if you like. People compromise and > live somewhere in between, which often means the worst of both worlds.

Plenty of people do not have to make long commutes, or they choose to do so for certain reasons. This is such a generalization that it's not very useful.

More interesting would be solving the problem of people needing to commute in the first place. How many of those jobs that people commute to actually must be done in the place they commute to? And I don't mean telecommuting, I mean, does that business really need to be located in that city? In the case of many office jobs, they could be located in smaller cities to begin with, so people wouldn't have to live as far away. Of course, this is also a nearly useless generalization.

However, I would suggest that the real problem here is, sadly, politics. How many business decisions are dictated by local laws, regulations, taxes, etc? How many businesses would relocate if it weren't for certain of these that make only a few locations feasible? And how many of those political decisions are caused by other businesses lobbying for them, whether to enhance their own advantages or disadvantage their competitors?

> Contrary to what you say, dense cities can be quiet and have isolated > private space. Look at the vast single-family-home suburbs of Tokyo. The > population density is high even without large buildings, and you can live > without a car easily (if desired), but you have your own house with a garden > on a quiet, secluded street in a safe neighborhood all within walking > distance of the train that can take you downtown. Not particularly cheap or > spacious, though. The noisy, crime-riddled, no-privacy-at-all hellish city > you describe is common, but it's not the only possibility.

This is the exception, not the rule. And I don't think Tokyo is a great example. My neighbors have a garden--it occupies as much space as their house. What kind of a garden would they have if they lived in a single-family home in a Tokyo suburb? A window box? And they would probably pay 5 times as much in living expenses, at least.

I would suggest that most cities in the world _are_ noisy, crime-riddled, no- privacy hellholes--at least, unless you are very wealthy. The average person in the average city can't afford to live in a quiet, safe, private dwelling. But the same person making the same money living in a suburb or small town can afford a much nicer, safer, quieter home, and nearly everything they need to buy is cheaper there as well.

> What the sibling comment says is true about social interaction in cities as > well. Living in the city people have more friends, more sexual partners, > attend more events, and interact more with strangers. For some that is a > plus.

For some, it is. Of course, it depends on how you define "city." But many people live happily and healthily in smaller places all around the world, with families and friends and local events (ones they probably have a larger role in, as well). It's not necessary to live in a big city to have a social life or a vibrant community. People have been celebrating harvest festivals for thousands of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> am I the only one that doesn't want flying cars? I want to be able to look up and see the sky, not traffic. I don't want drunk drivers ramming into buildings. I don't want to have to build a horizontal wall over my backyard for privacy. what benefit do they even have? I'd rather just have fast ground transportation

<comment><USER36> I think they would have to be self-flying cars to make it feasible.

<comment><USER35> maybe this is cynical but I can imagine a steady stream of litter raining from the sky's as people toss trash out their windows

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If the (ground) car enabled urban sprawl... just think what the flying car would do for it.

</comment><comment><USER38> > "Self-flying aircraft is so much easier than what the auto companies are > trying to do with self-driving cars"

I guess until everybody starts using them :)

<comment><USER10> Because there is no terrain to worry about.

<comment><USER5> There are broadcast towers with wires that are certainly worth worrying about if not accounted for in advance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think that autonomous vehicles make flying cars possible. On one hand, learning to fly is difficult (the problem has a dimension more than driving on the surface) and people really do not like wreckage falling from the sky. So one needs a highly trained expert to pilot any flying vehicle, or a fully autonomous autopilot.

The second thing is energy, a plane needs to handle a lot more energy than a car, simply because it flies, so it is more expensive. If someone own a flying car, then they are investing a lot into a capability they use very rarely. With a Uber like model of shared transportation one orders a car only when one needs it. And it makes sense to have a flying car in the pool, even at a hundred times the cost of a regular vehicle. So each individual customer will use that flying car almost never, but there are many, and the ones who pay a $100 to shave five minutes of their time are probably in that moment very happy, that they have that option.

<comment><USER40> > The second thing is energy, a plane needs to handle a lot more energy than a > car, simply because it flies

A cessna gets between 15mpg and 22mpg.

[http://www.cessna150152.com/faqs/performance.htm](http://www.cessna150152.com/faqs/performance.htm)

<comment><USER39> Admittedly it is the kind of argument that needs some justification. Roughly what I mean is, a car in the middle of the desert will just roll until it stops because there is a lot of friction between the tires and the ground. By contrast a plane flying above the desert left to its own will crash and burn, because the dissipation of energy occurs at the end of its trajectory.

<comment><USER41> > a car in the middle of the desert will just roll until it stops

And an airplane will glide pretty far until it stops.

Every single pilot has practical first-hand experience with unpowered landings- they're on the curriculum when you're getting your license. It's a remarkably survivable thing to do, especially in a desert with a road like your example.

<comment><USER42> > Every single pilot has practical first-hand experience with unpowered > landing

Considering many people can barely handle driving normal cars correctly, the number of average flying-car consumers that will have airplane pilot-level training, knowledge, skill, and maintain sanity in emergency situations like unpowered landings is minuscule.

<comment><USER43> Surely nobody thinks this can happen without autonomous (or at least remotely centralized) control?

Do they?

Because if they do, they've obviously never driven a _normal_ car in traffic, much less a flying one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've always thought a flying motorcycle makes more sense than a flying car. The power to weight ratios are closer, as are the engine requirements. Something like a long two seater cabin motorcycle with wings that attach like glider wings. Something like this with wings:

[https://peraves.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/roger_susan_mono...](https://peraves.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/roger_susan_monotracer_dsc_7255.jpg)

Flys like a motorglider. I.e. slow for a plane but faster than a car/bike. Very efficient per mile (for a plane). Tolerates engine failure with a good glide ratio.

Ground to air transitions happen at designated places (mini airports). Wings are left at the airport while you operate the bike in ground mode. Or towed in a narrow trailer just like a glider trailer.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm sure this is something Elon Musk would be trying to make, too, because there's a lot of expertise that his companies already have to build something like this: autonomous tech, rocket engineers, batteries, electric powertrains, solar panels, and he has already said he would probably build an electric airplane next.

If only he had the money to experiment with something like this. That's why I'm hoping that Apple buys Tesla eventually and makes Musk its CEO and lets him do whatever he wants with those $150+ billion (maybe $300 billion by then) cash reserves.

And apparently he's already toying with flying stuff:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740723195431538689](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740723195431538689)

<comment><USER3> > I'm sure this is something Elon Musk would be trying to make

I am not so sure. An electric airplane at least has the effect of lowering greenhouse emissions, thus increasing, even by a minuscule amount, the amount of time we have on this rock.

But flying cars? This is something that would increase the world's energy consumption, for little benefit.

He has already tackled transportation with the Hyperloop. Those are flying cars(or trains, depending on your point of view). Only they are safer, more energy efficient and more economical.

Besides, adding wings to a car doesn't seem like something one would do, if trying to think from first principles.

Also, I think the flying suit was a joke (my inner child is hoping not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Much like autonomous cars, feel the focus is on the tech instead of how the tech would impact culture.

Core issue is that flying spreads people out, and given how hyper connected people are, this makes no sense.

Real focus should on condensed living areas, not flying people around, which is a massive waste of energy.

</comment><comment><USER47> "We were promised flying cars, and instead what we got was 140 characters"

Silicon valley tries to create the future

</comment><comment><USER48> I remember the pulp Science Fiction magazines of the 30's, 40's and 50's. Quite often they had drawn pictures of cities with hundreds of planes going every which way. For a while it was autogyros, helicopters etc. It never happened. Cars won. A car is supported by the road with zero energy cost except for motion. Any aircraft must waste energy at all times, and the highest energy use is when standing still(hovering). Ok so they have 100,000 planes flying around LA at 200 miles per hour. Managing that number of planes under automatic computer control is a huge technical challenge. Human pilots = impossible.

Until we have anti g and can hover for zero energy it will never happen.

</comment><comment><USER49> What would the authorities do to prevent these things, if they existed, from being loaded with explosives and driven into buildings? Even if the idea got off the ground and anyone (who could afford one) could start flying around, how many terrorist attacks would it take before they were outlawed? Do you think, having taken out the white house, the government would stand behind civilians rights to own and fly them? They'd not only ban them, they're probably restrict private use of drones and planes too.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wish these guys would focus on new small turbofans, like the Williams EJ22. Pairing one of those to something like a Cirrus/Piper/Mooney airframe would give fast, low fuel, reliable powerplant for existing airframes. Add in a sprinkling of new technology to simplify the flight controls and you'd be a lot closer than trying to boil the ocean with "flying cars"

</comment><comment><USER51> Taking to the air is a Great idea! It won't be limited by transportation infrastructure. And you don't have to place the stations along a 2 dimensional arc as with train stations. You can have any point to any point directional travel. I forsee a future where people call uber like air travel at their nearest heliport.

I'm really glad someone is working on this!

</comment><comment><USER52> Surprised most articles haven't mentioned the flying car at CES:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-flying-car-maker- gran...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-flying-car-maker-granted- clearance-takeoff-simon-montford?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish)

</comment><comment><USER38> By the way, their job openings are all for B.S. and M.S. level (no Ph.D.), which seems a bit odd.

<comment><USER53> Maybe they need people who do work every day, not just think, talk, or write about doing work.

<comment><USER54> Ouch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It almost has to be a vertical lift/land shuttle type of thing to work. I don't see it being able to land in cities any other way. Very cool though, freedom in a whole other dimension.

</comment><comment><USER56> Distributed electric propulsion is promising, check out the NASA papers.

</comment><comment><USER57> I noticed this a while ago, that flying cars will only become real when self driving tech is progressed far enough that you have self-flying cars. Interesting to see that as a real project.

</comment><comment><USER32> This thread has the potential to become hilariously cringeworthy in a decade or so. I'll be checking back in five years to see if lightweight VTOL aircraft are still an idea that is "obviously stupid because we've tried it before and it didn't work".

My guess is that the progress in batteries and electric motors will have made this concept a lot more feasible by then. At some point it will be a completely obvious idea which will make us shake our heads at the skepticism it had before.

<comment><USER5> No, they do work just fine with Jet-A. Are they practical? No. Will electric battery technology overcome the constraints within 5 years? That's a viable hypothesis, sure.

<comment><USER58> I don't think battery technology could overcome the specific energy constraints in 5 years... Seems highly unlikely.

Jet-A is 46 MJ/kg - Lithium Air ~40MJ/kg - Lithium Ion is 0.85MJ/kg

Lithium Air is the only thing remotely feasible that 'functions' in a laboratory and it has not left the lab since 1970.

"Another recent review on Li-O2 batteries, authored by materials scientists from Technion- Israel Institute of Technology (Balaish, Kraytsberg et al. 2014), concludes with : 'The possibility of buying off the shelf Li–air batteries within 10–20 years does not seem realistic at the moment.'"

<comment><USER32> It wouldn't be an entirely apples-to-apples comparison to jet fuel. A fully- electric VTOL aircraft would ditch most of the wings, for instance, and instead make the fuselage lifting-body.

Wings are large to provide enough lift at takeoff and landing speeds, tail and rudders to provide aerodynamic stability which would be provided by electric motors instead. Also, the engines would be lighter and a significant fraction of the empty weight would be batteries. We wouldn't see an electric drop-in replacement for a long-distance airliner in the near future, no one is claiming that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Kind of odd how, with all the little schematics of flying cars on that page, Terrafugia is nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER5> Their new design, the TF-X, is the first schematic...

<comment><USER59> whoops, missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > Self-flying

Meh. That would be taking the fun out of it, taking away the very point.

<comment><USER61> You can keep flying with manual controls because it's fun. I'll fly in a self- flying car because I need to get somewhere fast and I'm not a pilot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> What about hoverboards?</comment>


FeeFighters Loses BBB Accreditation Over Investigative Blog Post - <AUTHOR> http://feefighters.com/blog/bbb-accreditation/ <comment><USER2> So tone deaf. A PR coup for FeeFighters. A total PR debacle for BBB. FeeFighters could in fact give a fuck about their actual accreditation, so they had nothing to lose. BBB meanwhile looks petty, out of touch, and defensive.

You didn't need to be a chess grandmaster to see how this will play out. You barely even need to see one move ahead. What moron at BBB OK'd this? How incompetent is the rest of their organization?

<comment><USER3> _You didn't need to be a chess grandmaster to see how this will play out._

Yeah, it will all blow over in a week or two because Fee Fighters is relatively small. A few more people will find out how sleazy the BBB is, but not enough to actually impact the BBB.

<comment><USER4> I think Thomas and I are thinking less "Probability that this will kill the BBB" and more "How many tens of thousands of dollars of PR firm time would produce demonstrably less press hits than this event will."

<comment><USER2> It's that and the "let's punch ourselves in the face" aspect of taking a story that you want to minimize, and deciding months later when it has completely blown over to send it aloft in a gigantic fusillade of skyrockets and roman candles. "PLEASE, ENTIRE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, PLEASE REVIVE THIS ABSOLUTELY TOXIC STORY. And if you could, could you maybe mix in a David vs. Goliath element to it this time?"

Having been in the room with PR people during (supposed) crises in the past: every single one of them would tell you _not to do_ what BBB just did here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone on the fence about the claims, 20/20 did an investigation[1] of the BBB and found exactly the same thing. They worked with companies with complaints against them and low ratings that were called by BBB representatives asking them to re-up their registrations.

Without much coaxing the BBB agents clarified that the ratings could be "reinstated" or "take care of" if the signup process was completed. Once the businesses did that, in every case, the scores were re-adjusted to A or A+ for those companies.

Conversely, companies that didn't re-up would have all their past complaints re-instated on their review page and scores drop to C/D/F levels.

Not unlike the Yelp stuff we saw going on last week or the week before here on HN.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8kfV9kONw>

</comment><comment><USER6> In extensive conversion testing we've found that the BBB symbol is the MOST beneficial trust-symbol to incorporate into your website.

This data is across multiple markets / products and joining the BBB is one of the things that we recommend early on to conversion clients.

Consumers trust the brand immensely which is sad given the BBB's "protection money" business model.

<comment><USER7> You are totally correct, although it depends wildly on who your customer is (IE older people grew up trusting the BBB, younger folks don't care). We had an internal argument about whether doing this was the right thing or not for our business. I did it against the wishes of some other FeeFighters because I believe it's the right thing to do (I HATE scams like these so much), but it did mean that we had to take their symbol off our site and suffer whatever consequences come with that.

When we do focus groups or usability tests with small businesses, they always look at the BBB ratings of the credit card processors on our site. However, I think with our new product Samurai (for online payments - <http://samurai.feefighters.com>) we'll have a more savvy crowd who doesn't care too much about the BBB.

For those of you who aren't too familiar with FeeFighters - our original product is comparison shopping for credit card processing. A good chunk of our customers are e-commerce businesses, startups, and other "sophisticated" merchants, but we also have a bunch of mom and pop shops (of every sort) who care about stuff like the BBB.

As it turns out, in the couple of months since we had to take the BBB logo off, we have seen no difference whatsoever in our conversion stats.

<comment><USER8> You should now use a (not)BBB Accredited! logo of your own design and see how it performs...

<comment><USER9> The Made to Stick (<http://www.heathbrothers.com/madetostick/>) authors might say that the surprise of seeing an explicit claim about NOT being accredited would make the FeeFighers site more memorable. When's the last time you saw such a claim?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just a friendly question to anyone at BBB who may be reading this thread:

Suppose someone on here happens to own a business with BBB accreditation, and that person posts a comment to this thread critical of BBB's handling of the FeeFighters situation. Would you consider that a violation of your terms?

For the record, I'm not criticizing or endorsing what happened with FeeFighters, since I don't necessarily know all the facts.

</comment><comment><USER11> This sounds pretty scammy to me. The good news is that I found a company on the Internet that lets you report scams: <https://www.bbb.org/scam/report-a- scam/>

<comment><USER12> "We have received your scam report and will only be back in touch if our investigation team needs further information."

I'd love it if they followed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this will lead to a Streisand effect for the BBB. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>). By taking away a company's accreditation for a reason that has nothing to do with the company's business practices, the BBB is showing exactly how objective it is.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I am totally on the side of FF here, it's hard to call a blog post titled "The BBB is a F _& #ing Scam" an investigative blog post. The BBB may indeed be a F_&#ing Scam (I have gotten horribly burned in the past for reporting something to the BBB), you gotta admit that the language in the blog post is pretty incendiary.

<comment><USER15> I'd be interested to know how you got horribly burned by /reporting/ something to the BBB.

(as a side note, is it the 'scam' word that you find incendiary? or the cussing? If it's the cussing, how old are you? To me, calling someone a scam is dramatic, while cursing doesn't really register.)

<comment><USER14> The story is one which I do not feel is appropriate to post publicly at this point. If you really feel like hearing it, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I _might_ oblige.

It is both the cussing and the use of the word scam. While I don't generally cuss myself, I have no problem with people speaking or writing like that, but I feel that it does frame the post as "I'm angry and have an anti-BBB agenda" rather than "I am a blogger trying to investigate a potential issue."

<comment><USER15> ah. If you don't feel comfortable talking about it, that's fine.

I dono I find the subject of the cultural acceptability of cussing to be kind of interesting. I'm considering adding appropriate asterisks to my own writing, more as a humerus affectation than anything else, as I personally can't imagine how the asterisks would make it less offensive, but eh, it's interesting to hear what people think about the subject. I sometimes wonder if I'm being way more offensive than I intend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> BBB is totally useless and corrupt. Used them before with a complaint and accomplished nothing but a waste of time and effort. Great job FeeFighters!

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it wild at times that old fashioned companies like the BBB are so out of touch with the world today that they think a new company can not last long enough without their support.

It just goes to show that FeeFighters are shaking things up in both their technical field along with other business sectors. If you ask me, that is exactly what a start up should be doing!

Congrats FeeFighters for shaking things up.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you do lose your BBB accreditation and want it back again, all you have to do is re-register (and pay the $600 or so) under a new name and you'll be back to square one. It sounds like a joke, but completely true.

One of my clients has a competitor who had an F rating due to numerous consumer complaints. They simply did the above and presto they were back to A- again.

</comment><comment><USER19> "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product that's being sold." comes to mind. Perhaps we need more Angie's List and Consumer Reports, and less Yelp and BBB.

</comment><comment><USER20> The BBB is a racket. That should be clear to anyone who thinks about it even briefly.

</comment><comment><USER21> The LA Business Journal had an article on the Los Angeles Chapter of the BBB. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall:

[http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2011/jul/25/scandal-may- sh...](http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2011/jul/25/scandal-may-shut- business-bureau/)

Scandal May Shut Business Bureau L.A. chapter hurt by pay-for-play revelations. // By ALFRED LEE // Monday, July 25, 2011

Here's a LA Times article: [http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/08/business/la-fi- bbb-p...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/08/business/la-fi-bbb- president-20110209)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the BBB even relevant?

My assumption was that its influence is quite low since the advent of the Internet. If I were looking to see for a plumber or a moving company, I'd check Yelp or Angie's List not BBB.

<comment><USER3> BTW, Angie's list runs the same kind of scam.

<comment><USER23> This is why Consumer Reports is so trusted. They take no money from companies. They don't do ads or have sponsored listings of any sort. They buy the products retail and review them.

If you have sponsored listings you'll always be succeptible to this. There's rumors of the same happening on Yelp (reviews being filtered and such).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is that drop down in-your-face share menu a Wordpress plugin or something? Fantastic way to get your attention. I think I've seen it before, not sure where though.

<comment><USER25> It's a way to get attention all right. When I saw it drop-down I closed the site.

I can cut and paste a URL, thanks. This 'Like' spam is something I dislike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds a lot like the Yelp.com criticisms I've read.

</comment><comment><USER27> In a just world, there would be some sort of humorous regulatory body that would force the "Better" Business Bureau to rename themselves something more suitable in response to this story.

Lamer Business Bureau? Sycophantic Business Bureau? I leave the actual name as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER14> Bustin' Balls Bureau is more accurate. They can keep their acronym, and their logo shouldn't be too hard to adjust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This has caused them to gain the "jrockway certified excellence" accreditation, which is, in my opinion, infinitely more valuable than the BBB's accreditation. So, I think, it's a net win.

(What's that you say? The limit of 0 * x as x goes to infinity is still zero? Hmm...)

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone should make some sort of organization that objectively tracks sleazy businesses like this so consumers have a place to go to find out about it before committing to use them...

</comment><comment><USER30> An organization that had goals similar to the BBB's would be very valuable for many consumers. What are some of the BBB's competitors? What's currently the best alternative?

<comment><USER31> For the consumers, there's the various state agencies. In Wisconsin, you don't contact the BBB, you contact the department of Agriculture and Consumer Protection. Those guys shut down a regional cellphone provider because of some complaints I and a few others filed about billing practices, etc. They responded to my web form submission with a half-hour very interested phone call.

I've heard similar stories in other states. I've always been told, as a consumer, to avoid the BBB and go through the state agencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Honestly, I don't know anyone who really seeks out BBB accreditation as a means of judging a business's credibility (I'm talking at the consumer level). In fact, the only times I've ever caught myself viewing any of their web content was for businesses I already knew sucked.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe there's a market opportunity for a new business accreditation site. Though you have to wonder if anything short of a government entity or extremely well-funded nonprofit would be able to maintain its integrity.

Do I smell a Y Combinator success story in the future?

<comment><USER34> It has to be something like wikipedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I declined to pay BBB when I started my business, but recently worked with a business that made me rethink the decision. This article reminds me of the vibe I got from the salesperson years ago.

</comment><comment><USER36> The original report is extremely interesting too, I don't see how it's even legal what BBB does

<http://feefighters.com/blog/the-bbb-is-a-scam/>

        Xpay asked the BBB what they could do to fix the problem.
        It turned out that all they needed to do was grease the
        wheels. The BBB noted that Xpay wasn't a member
        organization, and by becoming a member organization the
        BBB would "look into" those 11 complaints to see if they
         were worthy of being wiped clean. Xpay paid the BBB a
        fee of $760 (see fee schedule). Within a couple of days
        the rating had changed from an F to a C. A few days later
        and another phonecall, and the rating was changed to an A-.

That's extortion.

<comment><USER37> Racketeering.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They are in bed with the FTC so nothing will happen to the BBB. Total bunch of scammers.

</comment><comment><USER39> On the one hand Fee Fighters is fighting the "noble" fight, but they lose points for being so ideological.

BBB is a business and their terms are well known. Fee Fighters knew them and was required to abide by them and chose not to.

I do like that Fee Fighters is bringing this issue to bear. I'm personally not a fan of BBB. Pay to play doesn't seem like the incentives are aligned correctly. That and I can't afford their accreditation process for my business.</comment>


Counting Wal-Mart cars to forecast earnings - <AUTHOR> http://classic.cnbc.com/id/38722872/ <comment><USER2> I don't think you should be so quick to dismiss this. While one variable alone is obviously not a good predictor, don't forget that these firms often have many other sources of data. If they can figure out what the average spend per customer is and combine that will some satellite traffic analysis, that should be enough to predict a trend.

Also, some analysts don't necessarily need an exact figure for a quarter. Knowing that Wal-Mart traffic is trending up or down might be enough enough information to make a profit. Information is valuable to Wall Street, even if that information seems insignificant at first glance.

<comment><USER3> Most importantly, the analysts using the satellite images can look look at historical earnings reports to see whether the tool has any utility before they use it to make a prediction.

In fact, I'm almost positive they did (in part because the article says so, more or less).

EDIT: In particular, the regression mentioned was no doubt based on the relationship between historical earning reports and the sat imagery (once controlled for daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal variation, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When American Express was indirectly involved in fraud (salad oil IIRC), the stock tanked, because analysts sensibly realized that this public litigation would shake consumer confidence in them - arguably, trust is the very thing that a credit card company sells. But Warren Buffett went down to the supermarket to observe what consumers were actually doing - and saw that they were using them as normal. So he put in most (IIRC) of his wealth into it and more than doubled it (IIRC).

This satellite imagery analysis is doing quantitatively what he did qualitatively.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a perfect example of why you need to be super wary when investing on your own -- the technology, resources, and knowledge in the hands of these big firms is simply unattainable by individuals.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, you can exploit much smaller pockets of profitability as a small time investor.

<comment><USER7> I agree.

Real profit from investment comes from finding something that is below "true" price and buying it, or finding something that's above "true" price and selling it.

When small investors try to evaluate stocks and bonds, they compete with just about every hedge fund, fund manager, investment bank prop trading group.

On the other hand, small investors can attempt to profit by looking at investments that allow for relatively small dollar profits. For example, small real estate investment properties (e.g. houses with rental apartments) with values of, say, $300K, provide potential profits that are too small to be worth a large investor's time. In contrast, smaller investors should find the time spent vs. potential upside quite reasonable, and will have to compete only with other small investors -- which makes it more likely they can find investments that are a good deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that people who play with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and image analysis just found themselves a business model.

</comment><comment><USER9> They're not really counting cars, they do "parking lot fill rate analysis". Much easier to do - you just subtract the percentage of the parking lot that has the same color as the ground.

I see two main issues with this analysis. First, the amount of profit per customer visit is not necessarily constant, and can depend on things such as gas prices (e.g., cheap gas encourages two shopping trips per week, even though the total amount spent on groceries remains the same; expensive gas makes some people take the bus).

Second, is even the amount of visits well estimated? The article mentions things such as 0.7% accuracy in profit estimation. Random fluctuations in the number of car passengers, time of visit etc. (how often are these images taken anyways: once a month, or ten times an hour? the article doesn't mention) can lead to much greater variations than that.

<comment><USER10> > First, the amount of profit per customer visit is not necessarily constant, > and can depend on things such as gas prices

Given the scope of the company doing this kind of analysis, I don't think variance is going to be significant. Given a large enough sample or pool of data, some kind of "regression to the mean" effect is going to kick in. Remember it is all "estimation" in the end anyways, and I can see the value in having some kind of observable data as opposed to data based on "honest" reporting by those you are trying to study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get how counting cars in Wal-Mart and comparing rate of change over time can really help predict profit margin.

The average size of basket (retail sort-of-equivalent of ARPU), profit margin on goods, etc are all equally important but easily fluctuating factors which also make up profit projection.

Even in the article says that the 4% increase in cars parked in June this year over last was due to extra cost-slashing WalMart was doing... well that can lead to lower profits per customer so even with more customers coming in the store it could lead to a net 0 profit gain (but more merchandise shifted)

It's like saying I can guess the value of a in a = x * y * z by just monitoring the change in z, when all 3 are variables.

<comment><USER6> If you know something about the probability distribution of x and y, that might work out better than you expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Next they are going to tell us the amount of bandwidth that amazon uses directly reflects how much they make.. no kidding.</comment>


Which programming languages are the fastest? - <AUTHOR> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php Surprised that LISP is 20x faster than PHP or Perl in this benchmark (median times). It is even faster than Python and of course Ruby. <comment><USER2> As the page says, "No. Which programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?"

Which begs the question - aside from macho bragging rights, exactly what good is this kind of information?

Assume I did have a specific problem case for which performance in terms of memory, time or LoC mattered. As a first step, I'd write a specific benchmarkable implementation of my own problem (or one very like it.) Then I'd need to profile and optimise that implementation in my chosen language(s), as well as stop and think laterally about ways I might be able to optimise around that specific problem.

This is all assuming I'm working on a greenfields project where I have absolute free choice of language & runtime environment. Which happens for my personal projects, but never yet for a professional one.

Not to mention that in all other cases apart from this hypothetical where performance matters, I would take the most human-readable program over the most fast, lean or concise one.

Long story short, at no point can I see myself stopping and saying to myself. "You know what I need now? I need to see which programming language can generate a Mandelbrot set bitmap with the smallest memory footprint, without using any 'unfair' optimisation techniques."

<comment><USER3> It matters sometimes.

A while back, I wrote a program to solve a puzzle. The more complex the puzzle, the longer it took to solve. Today, I might come up with a better algorithm, but back then, all I could find was a brute-force approach. The most complex puzzle I had seen at the time was taking hours to run.

The program was written in VB6, and it was just wasn't mean for CPU-intensive programs like that. If I were to write that program again today, I'd be looking at optimizing the code for speed, starting with the language.

So yes, the question -does- matter. Sometimes.

<comment><USER2> _Today, I might come up with a better algorithm, but back then, all I could find was a brute-force approach. The most complex puzzle I had seen at the time was taking hours to run._

I bet that you could come up with a better algorithm now, even in VB6 if you had to, to get the run time down. I've seen people take "optimised" C solutions that run in hours and make them run in minutes, just by rewriting the algorithm and rethinking basic assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seem to remember that at one point, Pypy, Luajit and perhaps a Ruby interpreter were removed from the races.

Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(

<comment><USER5> The benchmark game now only shows one implementation per language. The reasons aren't very satisfying IMO, but see this thread:

[http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pypy/7303/focus=73...](http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pypy/7303/focus=7352)

<comment><USER6> If you want "the reasons" see the Help page -

<http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/help.php#implementationx></comment></comment></comment>


Simple Does Not Mean Ugly - <AUTHOR> https://uglyduck.ca/simple-does-not-mean-ugly/ <comment><USER3> To be honest, I have never encountered a website so far that even remotely had the same level of usability of a really good desktop application around the year 2000 or so.

How many websites have user-definable menu shortcuts, unlimited undo, instant user-feedback for every operation, tooltips that can be switched on or off, full internal drag & drop and OS-level drag and drop of files, standard user interface elements that work how the user expects them to work, a context- sensitive online help system, reconfigurable toolbars with user-definable icon sets, multiple open documents at once, movable and reconfigurable tool windows, manye internationalizations, and so on?

The web is still the future, I know, but web application UX designers are still re-inventing the wheel and without some enforced UI guidelines like Apple had in the 90s websites will never fully catch up with desktop apps in terms of usability.

To be fair, a comparison with modern desktop apps is much more favorable, because most of them have regressed in terms of usability.

<comment><USER4> > _How many websites have..._

Honestly I'd settle for buttons that are obviously buttons and menus that aren't hidden by default.

A lot of web design has gone backwards in usability, especially since Google popularized Material design.

<comment><USER5> I think we hit a pretty good local maximum for website usability in the few years when "leftnav column, header, content" layouts all looked and worked basically the same and were the standard look for lots of sites. Granted they weren't mobile friendly ("what's mobile?") but at least you could figure out how a site worked pretty fast if they stuck to that.

<comment><USER4> I liked that era too, and I agree that mobile-unfriendliness is most of what killed it.

I do also think that the incentive of a designer is not to create those kinds of designs. Familiarity is often more usable, but if your designs are familiar, why hire you at all? Why not just copy a competitor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very old and very relevant:

[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

And if you search for "motherfucking website", you'll find a million similar, satirical versions of a website inspired by that first one.

<comment><USER7> Sure but they are web pages, not websites. The distinction matters and does undermine the satire somewhat.

<comment><USER8> There's a distinction between a website and a web app. Web pages and websites are synonymous.

<comment><USER7> No I meant those two pages are each a single, individual, isolated page. A website is a collection of web pages, usually structured (even if loosely).

<comment><USER9> So, to make it a website you just need some links on each page that let you get to the other pages. I don't see how that undermines the satire.

<comment><USER10> Because it's easy to make one webpage, but when you make a website, you immediately run into a huge wall of issues about consistency and navigability. For example, it's become a convention that in the upper-left of a website, there will be a logo that leads you to the homepage of the site. How do you do that with bettermotherfuckingwebsite?

<comment><USER11> Hugo or any other static page generator work perfectly for maintaining clean and consistent markup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Usability != Aesthetics. "Ugly" it's an inaccurate term for what this person is trying to explain or argue here. If you ask me, I find the website of the article quite ugly. But that doesn't mean it's not usable and simple.

</comment><comment><USER13> > I'm saying that you shouldn't hide the elements themselves just to replace > them with mimicking components...

I've fallen into this trap before. It's easy to make a component that's just a little different than a default HTML field e.g. a text input with auto- complete. If you start disabling/hiding the underlying input element, accessibility drops massively...

<comment><USER14> It's funny that he says that, then suggests using Normform instead, which very much hides checkboxes to replace them with mimicking components.

To be fair, it's not like I've found a better solution for styling checkboxes.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, checkboxes simply need better theming support. Hiding them is not good, but also having them break consistency and sticking out like a sore thumb because there's no way to skin them is also not good

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to see styling guides for very large forms, hundreds of inputs, intended for rapid data entry. They've been a major part of my job for a few decades and I have plenty of thoughts on the subject, but I'm not super happy with any of them.

Things like Normform look great for basic forms, but when the entire screen is filled with inputs, so much uniformity and white space seems to hinder navigation and input speed.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious about why the entire screen is filled with inputs. Is it because the job is complicated, and the user should be highly skilled and trained?

<comment><USER16> The user is, or will quickly be, very familiar with the forms. The forms have been the same for decades, some users have even been using them that long. They occasionally need to jump around the form to reference other data so tabs and wizards slow them down.

Also, the forms are filled out differently based on customer defined rules which vary widely and change frequently, especially around qualitative questions. For large, long-term projects, the final form is hidden, qualitative questions are turned into multiple quantitative questions and mapped to the final answer so the user doesn't have to constantly think about the custom rules. But for small projects, it's too much development work and the user is expected to follow the rules manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The hamburger is a great example of "ugly simple". You are purposely hiding the main structure that allows your users to move around your product freely behind an additional interaction. That is the opposite of simple."

The author appears to be confusing two forms of simplicity. The burger bar isn't there to simplify the number of user actions to navigate. It's there because navigation is not the main mode of interaction, rather a side-affair. Always showing that content actually increases the visual clutter and cognitive load placed on the user for ALL their interactions.

</comment><comment><USER18> May be slightly relevant to the topic

worst kind of embedded video seen so far

[https://womenhack.com/events/#eb-events-section- title](https://womenhack.com/events/#eb-events-section-title)

why is that video running behind a text?? (only on a desktop, it doesn't show up on mobile)

It makes me dizzy as soon as I start reading the text. I can't finish reading!

</comment><comment><USER19> Sorry, but those buttons are absolutely atrocious. I get that underlined links aren't that great, but I'd much prefer it to that. Or maybe something like this: [https://dribbble.com/shots/7299868-Download- Buttons](https://dribbble.com/shots/7299868-Download-Buttons)

<comment><USER15> I think the buttons are a little much, but they are also very obviously buttons, which is good for usability.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but I think something like this: [https://dribbble.com/shots/5915773-Unlock- calls](https://dribbble.com/shots/5915773-Unlock-calls) is just a obviously a button. I might be wrong.

<comment><USER20> You can't decide whether it's "obviously a button" in isolation. Depends entirely on how that particular element fits into the rest of the page.

The only exception I can think of is that it's obviously a button if it uses system controls.

<comment><USER21> Those are quite obviously buttons. The difference is the design is flat versus the style in the post.

Those are a thousand times better than "buttons" that are just underlined text.

<comment><USER22> Or simply bold blue text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found the article to be frustratingly light on details and examples. Does anyone have more to contribute here?

<comment><AUTHOR> This probably isn't quite what you're looking, for but I wrote a post back in 2017 that might touch on these items a bit more? [https://uglyduck.ca/death- of-personality/](https://uglyduck.ca/death-of-personality/) (it's more of a "hot take" on flat design trends making for poor design in general)

<comment><USER15> There are some good examples of what not to do. Your button state example is the best.

I agree with you that they've turned the dial too far.

I'm hoping someone has a good collection of examples where the designer chose obvious interactions and visuals instead of something "clever" and it turned out well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a leader that manages both design and engineering teams I feel worse sin is being committed by the latter these days through unnecessary complexity in front end technology usage.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Your job as a designer is to focus on the user experience journey and > understand what those users expect to happen - not what you want to happen. > This is a very delicate balance of design "give and take", hence why simple > designs always seem to work best.

Interesting. Why not give users exactly what they want and make it easy by using standard patterns they see on all the consumer products they use?

</comment><comment><USER25> This article seems a little biased as the two images shown for example - <USER2> flat and one with gradients and reflections are poorly picked.

The flat one is clearly a better designed one and the gradient/reflection one is a badly designed and there are better examples the writer of the article could've chosen, but I think they picked it on purpose to back up their subjective opinion.

</comment><comment><USER26> This comes off as excessively ranty.

That said, if you replace the word "ugly" with "unintuitive", the points are mostly valid, if not particularly original.

#2 bothered me though, because while I've seen overly-simplified buttons that were just colored text without a border, I've _never_ seen ones where the text was underlined. Underlined colored text is still respected as the absolute universal signifier of a link. Now, some sites do remove those underlines on links which can create interference with other sites where non-underlined colored text is a button. But still, he should've used a more realistic example of the actual problem instead of a straw-man.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _Simple Does Not Mean Ugly_

Sure, but that's obvious.

Simplicity of use and the simplicity of appearance are two different things. Of course, one doesn't mean the other.

<comment><USER28> Counterexample: the Apple watch design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The header font is way too cramped. Simple is fine sure, but poor font pairing is indeed uncomfortable to look at.

</comment><comment><USER30> This blog looks so beautiful

</comment><comment><USER31> Still have overly complicated animations on his blog :hover.

</comment><comment><USER32> the ugliest part of the site imo is the super dark borders around the code snippets near the bottom. Should have kept it simpler

</comment><comment><USER33> The author's CSS form project seems interesting:

[https://normform.netlify.com/](https://normform.netlify.com/)

<comment><USER34> Honestly it seems terrible and wrong according to most popular user experiments on web forms.

1\. Error messages are non existant, all that shows is a redish/pink badge on the left. Which a color blind person may have trouble finding a difference from the blue one above. Also gives no indication as to what is wrong? Email missing a ., shows a red. Hard to say what exactly the error is without further details. And honestly errors are the biggest and most important part of any form. Good quality errors with clear messaging will go miles above any other "improvement".

The number one biggest annoyance is filling out a form only to get an error with something you didn't know needed to be done or you did incorrectly.

Rules are simple

\- Keep already in inputted date

\- Try and indicate as clearly as you can what the error is

\- Show the user to the error (if it's one maybe focus that element)

\- Help the user fix the error by offering suggestions, things like if a user types @gmial.com maybe say are you sure it isn't @gmail.com?)

\- If you are gonna hide forms in an accordion like checkout experiences, let me go back. And show something that indicates that section is good to go. Real time validation is really good. But PLEASE KEEP it the same as on the backend. Nothing worse then getting a checkmark on the front only to get an error after submitting from the backend.

\- KEEP THE ALREADY ENTERED DATA EXACTLY AS IT WAS I cannot stress this enough. The amount of times I've closed a website after entering a form and having all my data cleared from an error is more then enough.

2\. There is WAYYYY to much space between each element.

3\. The font is small, you should be using larger then size 12px font on forms. At least 14px.

4\. The implied "success" is a green border, however the dropdown does not turn green on selecting an option. So it does not look correct.

5\. The hover/focus state on the buttons is a slightly bigger light grey box shadow. Hard to read, and hard to know what is focused.

6\. Checkbox/radio group has no tab function, you cannot tab to it.

I could go on and on, and I'm not even that skilled with UX.

Also it breaks default styles for several other html 5 input elements, because it targets "input" rather than specific input elements.

Honestly if you want alright base styles that look good just use Bootstrap, at least it handles focus states correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been meaning to look-over Normform again (since it's been a while since I've touched it) and these are excellent points. I'll be looking to remedy these issues in the next iteration. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not to detract from a very good rant, on a site design which exemplifies and models its message, but the most critical element for design to me is that _design complexity should be appropriate to the problem domain._

Note that in _most_ cases, the problem domain is relatively simple, _and the design should reflect this._

Also: _the design AND problem domain should have minimal sufficient complexity_.

But beyond that, I see several specific cases of obviously bad design:

\- The design is needlessly complicated. It is _excessivly_ complex for the problem domain.

\- The design is _insufficiently expressive_. It is _overly simplified_ for the problem domain.

\- A variant of the second: the design sweeps complexity under the rug. Usually a small area pattern with three horizontal lines. A/k/a, if you're relying on a Hamburger Menu (or its diet power-yoga version, the kebab menu), you've probably got a Complexity Impedence Mismatch Problem.

Cases of design insufficient to a problem domain are ... well, pretty much anything which requires repeatitive actions on more than about 10 elements at a time. If your interface can present me with 10s, 100s, 1,000s, or more, elements or options, _and there is no way to meaningfully group or class those actions_ , then you have _insufficient design capability_. You've created an _appearance_ of simplicity by squooshing the complexity into the user-site (or -app) interaction.

Power-user tools are examples of more complex, but also _infinitely more capable_ designs. As a long-time user of tools such as vim, mutt, awk, etc., a small number of advanced capabilities allow me to work with ... 10s to 100s of thousands of emails, millions of files, documents numbering in the thousands (or more) printed pages, etc.

Contrast, as a totally random example, Google Chrome/Android, in which managing open tabs becomes effectively impossible at counts above 10-20 open tabs -- a milestone I can achieve in seconds after starting a new session.

My Firefox session, on a desktop, using Tree-Style Tabs, has 1,530+ tabs open (among other features: the browser includes reporting, buried, but available, of open tabs. I literally _do not know_ the equivalent count on my Chrome session, it's not available).

The count is, admittedly, high.

*But the browser remains useful and usable, and (given time to go through and process the tabs), I can in theory deal with the overage. I can at least identify and contain the parts of the session associated with various projects.

Firefox's "Pocket" article archiver is an example of a tool exceedingly poorly matched to its problem domain. I have ~15,000 articles saved within the system. The browser is actually more useful than the putative archival tool.

(I've written on Pocket's many failings: [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/))

Also: bradley_taunt: "if you" should be "if your", typo.

</comment><comment><USER36> "User experience design" is one of the most pretentious titles that Design (with a big D in front) has ever appropriated. As if a designer (little d) can really design an experience... Experiences unfold in realtime, shaped by a multitude of forces which the designer could never predict or even begin to comprehend.

This article reminds us to focus on what Design (big D) once knew when our practice focused on interactions and augmenting human intellect... affordances, feedback, loops.

Seeing my parents and peers struggle with understanding iOS or dealing with shitty bank websites makes me feel that we lost our way somewhere. Maybe one day we will return.

<comment><USER37> Sorry but as a UxD of 15+ years, that is exactly what I and my team do. It is entirely possible and reasonable for a little d designer to understand and account for the realtime forces that affect a user in context.

The problem is three-fold. First, is that UxD has become a catch all for any digital designer (it took me 8 months to hire 2 qualified UxDs). Second, most companies simply don't pay for professional design talent.

I can tell you with certainty that banks pay between 30% and 50% of market rate for senior design talent. Most mobile app startups pay slightly less than that.

Third is that we don't write the code. We can only recommend what a developer should build and what a stakeholder should prioritize. I've watched both sandbag good design in favor of more features more times than I can count. I've watched both sandbag good design because there was no percieved business value more than once. I've had so many countless conversations with developers who wouldn't do the work because they didn't know how to implement a design and wouldn't admit their knowledge gap.

A true UxD who can cover interaction, behavioral psychology, kinesiology, aesthetics, workflow, accessibility, information architecture and basic research methods can command good money that most companies outside FAANG aren't willing to spend.

<comment><USER38> > _I 've watched both sandbag good design because there was no percieved > business value more than once._

Riffing on the article title: Simple Does Not Mean Deficient.

"Star had many fewer commands than today's systems, and it didn't do it by having fewer functions. It just had fewer commands." — Dave Smith at The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' Computer (video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OwG_rQ_Hqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OwG_rQ_Hqw) text: [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2015/09/102737965-05-01-acc.pdf) )</comment></comment></comment>


GCP and Confluent partner to deliver a managed Apache Kafka service - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2018/05/google-cloud-platform-and-confluent-partner-to-deliver-a-managed-apache-kafka-service <comment><USER2> Why would someone want to use Kafka rather than PubSub? For a nonexpert, it seems like PubSub is just a tighter abstraction---same basic operations, fewer knobs to turn. Are there important features in Kafka, that aren't in PubSub and can't be easily built on top of PubSub?

<comment><USER3> I upvoted your question - not sure why its been downvoted, as it seems like a good-faith question, and not to mention - a very reasonable question.

Subtle differences in the semantics of pub/sub and message passing services can have really significant consequences for their use-cases.

Google Pubsub is at-least-once delivery, and best-effort ordering. That means any consumer pipelines need to be able tolerate duplicates and out-of-order messages - in many cases, that's not trivial to handle. If the order of your messages isn't that important, and if you can make the operations of consumers idempotent - pub/sub is awesome. But more often than not, it becomes just another message passing service to add to your plethora of message passing services, because its limitations can't extend to all of your use-cases. (I really want one ring to rule them all - Kafka gets the closest, IMHO)

Kafka is an basically pub/sub on top of an ordered, append-only log, and consumers read the log stream very much like a single process reads/seeks on a file handle - using offsets. Given infinite storage - your entire data stream can be replayed, and any data can be recreated from scratch - thats a pretty awesome thing.

<comment><USER4> >> I really want one ring to rule them all

Try Apache Pulsar: [https://pulsar.incubator.apache.org/](https://pulsar.incubator.apache.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love Kafka and the log orientated streaming model, but I often have to think twice before recommending it to clients who would have to manage the ops themselves. Having a managed service on GCP, and Confluent's existing cloud offering on AWS really brings down the barrier to entry. There aren't really any AWS/GCP serverless equivalents (Kinesis has 7 day retention maximum, no key compaction, and less surrounding tooling such as KStreams/KSQL).

<comment><USER6> May I ask why you wouldn't recommend it to teams that have to manage it themselves? I haven't used it myself but my team is currently looking at using it internally. The first project will be integrating it into our log pipeline between nodes and our logstash instances.

<comment><USER7> There is absolutely no reason other than the overhead you need to self manage the service like you would self manage any other internal service.

If you are comfortable at operations you'll be fine. Some people are not good at ops so outsourcing the problem making the ops side someone else's issue can also be useful.

Self hosting will offer far more options when it comes to scaling and tweaking. Overall on bare hardware costs it's cheaper and faster although up front costs will be higher.

Kafka usecases are rarely elastic so don't gain that advantage in the cloud. Also Kafka's missing tierd storage makes it expensive if storing big volumes of data.</comment></comment></comment>


Author warns of Russia's and China's 'Spinternet' - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/011011-author-warns-of-spinternet.html

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately I agree with much of what this author says, to wit; "The border between cyber-utopianism and cyber-naivete is a blurring one," he writes in "The Net Delusion." "In fact, the reason why so many politicians and journalists believe in the power of the Internet is because they have not given this subject much thought. Their faith is not a result of the careful examination of how the Internet is being used by dictators or how it is changing the culture of resistance and dissent."

Makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I want to know is how can we tell? How can we tell if some topic is totally spun by a larger entity?

Just as an example, most folks who read Linux-related web sites firmly believe that Microsoft and/or Wagg-Ed have paid shills that disrupt Linux conversations. There's the obvious pro-Windows entities, like "Loverock Davidson" in the ZDNet forums, but at least some folks beleive that most or all of the radically pro-Linux ultra-fanboys are planted too, to discredit the more moderate and logical Linux fans.

There's not a single shred of evidence to support this, except maybe Microsoft's history of paying for pro-Microsoft studies, but still people believe.

How am I to tell that a government has set its propaganda agencies on a topic?

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're in London, The London School of Economics and Political Science is having a public lecture next week with this author, Evgeny Morozov. I believe it'll be available as a podcast after the fact, for anyone who can't get there.

[http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2011/20110119t1830...](http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2011/20110119t1830vSZT.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> The good news from the propogandists point of view is that it seems you only need to pay people very small amounts of money (50 cents) to encourage them to engage in propaganda. With the budgets available to governments this should permit them to scale their human operations quite well.

In a totally unscientific sampling, I've seen plenty of stuff in the last few years in terms of news articles and YouTube videos which certainly look like explicit propaganda. The problem is that propaganda may often be subtle, with no easy method to clearly identify astroturfers from genuine opinions.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can even find the propaganda bloggers on HN, at least it appears: <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jojogogo>

Luckily, the astroturfing is...not so good in most cases from what I've seen of the Chinese bloggers. There's a few times where I've noticed oddly pro- Chinese opinions that were well formed and articulated, but I think some of those are indeed genuine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Individuals are still responsible for using the tools that are available to them, the evolution from broadcast media to open internet won't change that.</comment>


Live as if someone you love, but don't know who, were to die tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://n8.tumblr.com/post/15568958614/live-as-if-someone-you-love-but-dont-know-who-were

<comment><USER2> If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, then I certainly wouldn't be at work today.

But if I knew someone I loved was going to die tomorrow, then I wouldn't be at work today, either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that wasn't exactly my point. You don't know who is going to die. Just someone. What if that someone is someone at work who you are close to. Might make you pause next time there's an argument at work about something.

<comment><USER2> Might make me pause before I get into a needed argument with a loved one, too. Might make me reconsider going on vacation. Reading a book. Everything.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What societal changes will result from Coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> In what ways will society (wherever you live) look different in say a 6 months or a year? <comment><USER2> From a purely IT perspective, a lot more infrastructure to do with working from home is being thoroughly tested. Knowing how large numbers of home workers cope with the isolation and the infrastructure available within their companies could lead to even more people working away from company offices. This in turn could lead to better comms infrastructure, but with reduce commuters to major centres of work, the public transport companies may have to scale back. In turn less sandwich shops, less taxis, etc.

People going through this sort of experience I hope will lead to people taking on a greater expectation of the importance of good hygiene. When the flu seasons starts again at the end of the year this experience will hopefully still be strong in people's minds and they'll be more careful about simply ignoring it.

As Winter comes back around at the end of the year I think people may start to change certain habits, more people wearing masks in public as annual flu rises again, people less willing to shake hands or kiss each other openly if they're not already intimate. Many European cultures regard the touch of cheek-on- cheek to be a mark of affection among friends, will that action simply start to die out as people are reluctant to touch each other.

Ultimately you can't tell, but I think post-COVID will certainly a very intersting time for the social behaviour observers and the stats collectors. Interesting times for sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends a lot on whether or not there's a vaccine/cure.

We might still be dealing with COVID-19. Ideally, we probably still would be at the peak of it, if we managed to flatten the curve.

With all the resources focused on this, it will likely cause an economic shock. Italy's deep in debt, suspending taxes and mortgages. Other countries will soon follow. Our economic systems today are remarkably fragile - we make 50 year investments, take on lots of debt and debtors, whereas in the past, economies are built with the inevitability of war in mind.

We tend to abstract things out like supply chains. Your sandwich and coffee might go through a dozen countries. What happens when it's no longer free flow? Do prices go up or down?

A lot of industries could die. Mainly airlines, who are already dealing with thin margins.

In harsh times, people either become savage survivalists or become a tight- knit tribe-like community. We'll see which way it goes.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations for Expert Level JavaScript Classes - <AUTHOR> I am trying to find recommendations for an expert level javascript class for a friend of mine. My friend learns best in the classroom (in an interactive environment with question/answer sessions), and as a result I was trying to find a "bootcamp" either on the weekends or some 1 week long coure that could help in taking intermediate javascript skills to the next level.
I am local to the Dallas-Fort Worth area but open to recommendations in person within the United States.
Any suggestions are more than appreciated. <comment><USER2> Not sure I can help (for geographical reasons), but I think you ruined your 'asking for a friend' thing at the end there.</comment>


Unobtainium - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/08/08/unobtainium <comment><AUTHOR> >"By the 1990s, the term was widely used, including formal engineering papers. (As an example,

 _Towards unobtainium [new composite materials for space applications], by Misra and Mohan_

describes how the ideal material (unobtainium) would weigh almost nothing, but be very stiff and dimensionally stable over large temperature ranges.)"

Addendum: Perhaps Carbon Nanotube Fibers -- are one potential candidate for "Unobtainium": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube)</comment>


Ask HN: Evaluate my app idea - <AUTHOR>

Simple idea; Automagically capture data from LCD of Health/Fitness machine.
Mockup Demo: http://www.vimeo.com/15179861
You just finished your workout on Treadmill or done with your health test on Glucose meter etc. You pull out your Iphone, start TrakBug App, select machine you just used, and then point camera towards LCD of machine. TrakBug reads data from LCD using image recognition. To handle non-LCD cases, Trakbug allows you to enter data manually.
App Goals:
-Automate capture data from variety of health/fitness devices
–Analyze data for trends
-Share data
Questions:
-Would this be a useful app?
-Do you think there is a market for this?
-Who would be most benefited from this app?
-What feature am I missing?
Thanks for the feedback! <comment><USER2> There's a huge market for this, and devices like this are already on the market based on Wi-Fi, rather than image recognition. I know ICON fitness made an accessory last year that interface to standard fitness equipments, and allows you to share data with your Facebook friends.

this would be a really useful app if it's based on image recognition, but the question here is does it work? to do this, you would have to take an image, send it back to your server for computation, and pass information back to the user. you'd have to periodically feed images to your server - would it be every second? or 5 seconds? it'll be quite a CPU-intensive task, so image recognition may not be the answer if fitness companies out there are already doing it Wi-Fi.

wrt to the use model alone, if you make the user hold the device while they're exercising, no one would do that. it'd be too awkward.

And i wouldn't think about allow users to entering data manually.

<comment><USER3> I think the OP mentioned that the snapshot is taken at the end of the exercise, basically to capture the statistics.

Even the image recognition part is not that difficult, assuming simple LCD display. The problem is whether they are able to handle the universe of exercise machines (or at least say 95% of exercise machines). One possibility is to ask users to submit image and if their machines are not found, ask for their help to take a few snapshots, etc. Given them a badge so they can brag about it (and even help spread the word).

In addition, I'm worried that the type of data provided is highly inconsistent amount machines. Can the OP easily combine incomplete information from different types of exercise machines?

If somehow the OP can manage this, I think it would be a great app, and yes, people are willing to pay money for this app.

<comment><USER4> We got a strong image processing team and have figured out our core image processing algorithm. Our algo should be able to handle 80-90% of LCDs with ease.

If user is using a machine for first time, he has three options, (1) Select one of machines listed in app (2) User creates a machine profile (as shown in video link) (3) Search & download from server where we will continue to add new machine profile & also allow users to post their created machine profile

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have not done thorough research, but based on what i feel\know, i have following opinion/views.

1\. Analytic part : It should not be hard to implement a simple application to generate good figure, pie charts, etc. (much easier than screen/data reading part)

2\. Image processing as sole innovation. : Application will solely be based on it as prime innovation/challenge, but that is not so bad thing. Other solutions will be based on wi-fi, blue-tooth, usb, etc and they will have their own limitations (configuring, downloading, connecting etc). Ease of use may decide the winner. Only if all fitness equipment manufactrs. join and develop a universal application targetting large number of machine to connect using blue-tooth, wi-fi etc, then it may be better solution. I donot see this thing happening very soon. (span of 5 years, my estimate). In this time, this application (based on image processing), if it can establish itself, it may possibly be hard to replace it. It would have already created customer base for itself.

3\. Application will target low income group. May not be true. If application works as i see it should, i feel it may be used by all groups.</comment>