Ask HN: Is there anything we can do at our level to help fight coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> This might be a long shot but is there anything we programmers/tech-savvy people can do at some level to help fight coronavirus?
I'm thinking about crowdsourced labelled data that have been used in some research recently, or model training maybe.
Broad enquiry <comment><USER2> Wash your hands more.

<comment><USER3> Lobby for better labour rights and paid time off. We don't need cafeteria workers spreading any kind of disease when they should instead be home and get better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Making a p2p message board such that outbreaks like this can't be censored by Chinese government anymore.</comment>


MicroPython on the BBC micro:bit - <AUTHOR> http://ntoll.org/article/story-micropython-on-microbit <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the linked article and involved in bringing Python to the BBC micro:bit. Happy to answer questions.

<comment> david-given Can you talk about the hardware at all? Technical details seem really hard to come by.

e.g. Wikipedia suggests it's got two processors. That's application processor and a USB I/O processor, right? Which handles mass storage mode and bootstrapping the applications processor? Does it also provide a debugging interface, and can it be programmed? Have they exposed any JTAG pins for the applications processor? Are you required to use their toolchain or can I just womp something up with gcc and deploy it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, I can't reveal any more about the hardware than is already in the public domain already. :-(

Happy to talk about MicroPython.

Sorry.

<comment><USER2> Can you talk about what kind of documentation will be released? Data sheet? programmer's manual? anything at all about the hardware?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you'll get all the digital assets needed to be able to re-create the hardware yourself as well as access to the software.

Obviously, we'll be documenting the MicroPython implementation. Other partners will do their own thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this going to be an ongoing thing? I mean, after the device is distributed this coming year, will another batch will be sent to the students in the following year? I'm asking because my son will start secondary school at September 2016 and I would be very thrilled to have me, i mean - him, play with one.

<comment><AUTHOR> The BBC and partners are working together to organise how the legacy will function. This could include a second drop next year. Others are correct, the device will be available for the general public to buy. Given the eventual openness of the plans and resources, you should also be able to order your own to be fabricated somewhere. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW... here's a playlist of MicroPython / micro:bit status videos made during development and at PyCon UK: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzCYc445IVNQimtxAlPpa...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzCYc445IVNQimtxAlPpaFMtvv8qKSncK)

</comment><comment><USER4> I tend to get fanboyish around MicroPython, because it dramatically lowers a lot of barriers between my rough web-plumbing skills and the world of embedded devices / IoT. Hopefully it will be the same for kids.

On related news, it's great to see the generation that grew up with the BBC Micro is now fully in charge and understands the power this sort of "social programs" can have.

<comment><USER5> As a web plumber, the Arduino (and Photon and all the other similar platforms) is very very easy to get started with. With minimal C experience, I made a mobile phone[1] and the software was, by far, the easy part.

I definitely recommend buying an Arduino or one of the clones that sell for $2 or so.

I'm very excited about MicroPython as well, though, can't wait to buy something that will run it. (EDIT: at almost $50 per pyboard, it turns out I _can_ wait :( )

[1]: [http://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary- saga/](http://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/)

<comment><USER6> The esp8266 runs it. With WiFi and costs 5 pounds with a USB interface. (Nodemcu)

<comment><USER5> Huh, that's very interesting, thanks! Does it come with MicroPython by default, or do you flash it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would have gone with Lua, personally, specifically eLua, but this is still pretty awesome.. for those who have the micro:bit already, whats it like? Do any of you guys have experience with giving one to kids and seeing what they do with it?

I'll get one for my kids eventually .. but for sure, I'd imagine eLua to be high on the list of things to get running on it.

EDIT: Lua would be better than Python, imho, because it doesn't require an editor for young minds to harness before they can get working code .. my experience with my 5 and 8 year old kids is that they absolutely are not interested in programming if everything has to line up right - as is the case with Python - but if there are less restrictions imposed on them by the language, the interest flourishes. To me, while Python is an easy language to learn, Lua is a better language to start with .. so if I were a micro:bit user, I'd be putting Lua/eLua on it ..

<comment><USER8> > Lua would be better than Python, imho, because it doesn't require an editor

Can you elaborate on this? How does Lua not require an editor? Is it spoken programming language or something?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I was not quite coherent with that statement: I mean that Lua doesn't require that you learn to use an editor to line things up properly, a concept which my 5 and 8 year old kids definitely have an aversion to, since it seems like trivial nonsense (to them) to have to do formatting to make code work, having cut their teeth on the BASIC of our 8-bit battlestations set up for the task.

I just mean, to a new programmer - especially a young one - having to grasp alignment/editing concept is a stumbling block, and unnecessary when languages like Lua provide all the same degree of power as Python, and less to learn to get started..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow! Very nice to see how Damien saved the day with MicroPython!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Damien is one of the most talented developers I've ever had the pleasure to collaborate with. Seriously amazing amounts of very clever work have gone into this.

<comment><USER9> I agree 100% :-)

<comment><USER10> Damien who? Github?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia's Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/nokias-visionary-wants-to-out-design-apple/

<comment><USER3> This article is mostly counting angels on pins given that Nokia has months and not years left, but their Lumia hardware designs really are excellent.

They're beautifully tapered, the colors are distinctive, and the feel in the hand is lovely. I wasn't delighted with the sicky Pentile displays they used for the first run, but the new IPS displays should put that to bed. They're strongly reminiscent of the 2nd Generation iPod Nano, one of the most fantastic pieces of Apple design.

Despite all of Nokia's profound failures in the last few years, they found a distinctive and appealing design for their "flagship" phones that didn't mindlessly ape the market leader and they should be commended.

<comment><USER4> If you want to get really depressed, read Gizmodo's (or Engadget's) review of their Meego(?) phone that was never sold because of the MS acquisition.

The review basically said that someone had finally created the perfect competitor to the iPhone. And it was never released. :(

<comment><USER5> I got the N9 here in New Zealand a couple of months ago. It is absolutely brilliant.

By absolutely brilliant, I mean $200 cheaper than the Lumia 800 (which I also got for my wife); A mile better than the crappy samsung gio I previously had; beautiful hardware design; very hand front facing camera and auto adjusts screen brightness to ambient light; very good account management/integration.

The thing that lets it down is app availability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the look of it and I'd love to have a decent smartphone with a great camera for my wife (no iPhone). My nagging inner nay-sayer is probably just the geek that bought into Maemo (and still wears the shirts).

That said and out of the way: Isn't Microsoft dictating quite a bit about the design features of Win7/Win8 phones? Put differently, is there enough room for design (as in, artistic, for simplicity distinguished from technical advance in this question) innovation?

The OS is outside of their control I assume. The basic form factor is a given, buttons etc. predefined. What, ignoring the tech specs and build quality, are the design features?

Or am I just misreading design over and over again as 'make it beautiful' instead of 'engineer it in a way that it works well'?

<comment><USER7> You're correct in that Nokia's limitation of design is in the hardware. The vast majority of the interaction is the software.

That leaves primary the touchscreen, shape of the phone and maybe a button. Also, the camera. I'd say thats about ~20% of the experience of using the phone, likely less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First rule of out-designing Apple is you do not talk about out-designing Apple.

<comment><USER9> I don't think the designer said that. The author asked him some specific questions about Apple, but almost all of the Apple-oriented content of the article was from the author, not the designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks different and something I would want to grab and use. But honestly, Windows Phone layout is just boring. After I used it for a few times, I wouldn't want to pick it back up.

<comment><USER11> Not a Windows Phone user, but have used several and liked them fine - is it really any more boring than the iOS home screen?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I really don't get this line of thinking. The iOS and Android home screens are about as boring as you can get. It's just a grid of icons.

<comment><USER13> My home screens also have widgets to show the weather, books I'm reading, control various power options, media controls, etc.

It's not just a grid of apps, there is much more possible on the Android home.

<comment><USER14> Widgets let you do what live tiles do, but the difference is really in the discoverability. "Pin to start" is pervasive throughout the WP interface, and live tile functionality is built into the "default" app launcher icons. Pull up the location of my apartment in the navigation app? Oh hey, I can pin it as a tile for one-tap "get directions home"? Sweet! Stuff like that.

On my Evo I never made nearly as much use of widgets because adding them to the start screen was a different process from adding apps to the start screen, and not integrated into the apps themselves in the same way as far as I remember.

The other start screen thing I like about WP is that I hardly ever used the stuff on anything but my main, front-and-central home screen on my Evo. I usually just glanced at the home and then shut it off without swiping left or right to my alternate desktops, unless I wanted to launch an app on one of them. The WP "just swipe down to scroll through all the tiles" idea is really convenient for helping to remember everything you pin there.

<comment><USER15> The discoverability thing was maybe valid on Gingerbread and below. But with ICS and above, the widgets are integrated into the app drawer, and there should be no discoverability concerns.

<comment><USER16> They are, but every app adds 3-4 widgets to that draw. There are so many in there, in variations like small, medium and large size, that I never ever look in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Put affordable 3D printing and thus production of small hardware enclosures in the hands of honest and open creative people (that excludes Apple). Let the electronic engineers design the boards, and the Asian factories mass produce them. But let honest creative people design and produce the enclosures.

There are so many more creative people out there who could contribute to how electronic gadgets look and feel but who can't because of the closed prototype-->offshore mass production pathway, which has not changed since the 1970's.

Everyone can see that continuing to rely on Apple as the sole source of creativity is not going to work.

<comment><USER18> Do dishonest creative people make worse design decisions than honest creative people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure what's new here. All the Windows Phones (7+) had a unique user interface. The array of live tiles, the emphasis on a narrow array of primary colors and the lack of UI customization always characterized Windows Phones. Also, Nokia phones have been known for good build quality for quite a while. Producing phones in colors other than black and white isn't new either.

Considering the limitations that Microsoft imposes on customizing the OS, I'm not sure how many avenues for differentiation remain for the phone body itself. There is only so much you can do with pure design. I think the more radical and original designs are only enabled by superior core technology like the size of the SOCs, batteries and other internal components. If you want a smartphone as thin and flexible as a credit card, then you're going to need advancements on a whole lot of fronts, most of which aren't within the purview of the designers. I think that Nokia needs to bank on something more than just phones that are outwardly a bit fancier than the competition. 4.7 inch screens and Gorilla Glass are old news.

</comment><comment><USER20> > "Nothing else looks like this in a phone store," he says of the 920. "It's > very, very, very organic. It's almost super-organic,

Also wants to out-do Apple on reality-distortion :)

I am glad to see a company competing on visual/industrial design, where Sony and Dell have failed miserably.

<comment><USER21> Organic things like trees and such are well known for their smooth glass surfaces and straight edges. Be careful if you put one of these phones down in a park, you might lose track of it among any nearby sticks. :)

This goes beyond distortion and well into redefinition.

<comment><USER22> "Organic matter" always makes me think of "fertilizer" or "compost" (ha ha). But I do like the ID designwork Nokia have done.

I don't see how the new phones will change the game for them, though; they're incrementally better than the old ones (apparently as is the software).

<comment><USER21> I quite like the way these phones look too. Nokia, when they try, does a good job on such things, I think. It is just that nothing about them looks organic at all. So it is absurd that someone kept using that term for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A good follow-up to this article could be [this review][<http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/portable-cathedrals>] of the deceased Nokia N9.

<comment><USER24> Thanks, excellent writing. I think I'll buy it after all :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> <cones> += [rectangles] [http://cabin9design.com/media/content/50274%20Pine%20Cone%20...](http://cabin9design.com/media/content/50274%20Pine%20Cone%20Wall%20Mirror.jpg) a nice Scandinavian touch

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't have a smartphone, so I'm not the target market here.

But to me, it looks like a yellow iPhone running Windows. What have they "out designed Apple" on?

Are there subtle smartphone features I'm missing out on?

<comment><USER11> The Lumia phones really need to be held in the hand to appreciate the design. There are a few salient points:

\- The colors are fantastic, the palette is incredibly vibrant without being gaudy.

\- Despite the bright colors, the material feels high-quality and not plasticky, which is the fate that usually befalls brightly colored consumer electronics. The texture of the colored bits is really, really good - <USER2> than anything HTC or Samsung is fielding, IMO.

\- The curvature of the device feels very natural in the hand, moreso than IMO most phones - particularly Motorola phones that feels very front-heavy and too-thin.

\- The glass front feels like glass, unlike, say, Samsung's phones. My Galaxy Nexus's glass feels very distinctly plasticky, almost like a thin film has been deposited on top (and I suppose it might actually be just that).

\- There's a comfortable heft to it that subtly reminds you that it's supposed to be an upmarket device, similar to iPhone, and dissimilar to Samsung's flagship phones, which feel _too_ light to be taken seriously.

<comment> Su-Shee Couldn't agree more.

I already own an N9, which is a beautiful, tasteful piece of hardware in itself - no plastic-y feel at all and I have a Galaxy Nexus, too.

Really, no comparison.

On top, I find the metro UI design very elegant and convincing, I'm actually considering a Lumia. Can't wait to try one in my hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Apple's real strength/genius was marketing.

<comment><USER28> I don't know that you can separate marketing from making great products as causes of Apple's success. I think both are needed.

<comment><USER27> The statement was concise and clear. You are reading into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I applaud their intentions but their latest effort just looks like any other smartphone only plasticier.</comment>


Google One Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/onetoday/

<comment><USER3> Have you ever been working on something then had some huge company just go ahead and release exactly what you're building? Yeah, um, that totally didn't just happen to me.

<comment><USER4> Contact the team. Ask for a job.

No, seriously.

<comment><USER5> i'm impressed with your belief in google. You can't just do it. It's a giant institution with rules and hiring process is formal and can't be done by the team.

<comment><USER4> There are at least two ways to get hired at Google:

* Apply blind

* Work on something fascinating, and have someone on the inside want to hire you

The second one is normally acquisitions, but it's how researchers often get hired away from universities as well.

I'm not saying it's likely for someone to get hired the second way, but it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once saw a nice idea when I was traveling to Sofia in Bulgaria. When I withdrew money at an ATM it asked me at the end if I would like to donate 1 LEV (0.66 USD, 0.5 EUR) to Unicef.

I really liked it, because it's a very small amount of money, a big name (Unicef), and it's no hassle at all.

I don't know if there are enough ATM withdrawals for the sum donated this way to be significant at all. But if yes, I wish they would do it in other countries, as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> "One Today is an app that brings together people and nonprofits through the simple act of giving $1."

To be clear: you'd be giving the non-profit $0.98, and your credit-card company $0.02:

<http://www.google.com/onetoday/faq.html>

"How much of my donation will reach the nonprofit?

"The nonprofit will get all of your donation except the credit card processing fee of 1.9%"

<comment><USER8> And this is the real value of Bitcoin et al. As more and more commerce moves to the Internet, I become increasingly irked by the credit card processing "tax" levied by Visa/Mastercard. I long for the day we can yank those leeches off the legs of the Internet economy...

<comment><USER9> Of course, Bitcoin is also designed to charge a processing fee. This is currently optional, but it is entirely conceivable that this would change in the long run if Bitcoin ever sees adoption on a serious scale. This holds especially true given that mining awards will go down. Furthermore, services built _on top of Bitcoin_ will have such charges as well.

I don't think economics as a science has a consensus theory _that has withstood serious empirical shakedowns_ for explaining how high such fees end up in practice.

<comment><USER10> You know the bitcoin exchanges are taking a transaction fee in the same way the credit card companies are, right?

<comment><USER9> I'm very much behind on this since you wrote that two days ago, but I wrote my initial reply in the mindset of "what if Bitcoin becomes more pervasive" - <USER2> in: it gets increasingly used as an alternate currency. But of course your point still stands for the world today, and that other world will probably never come anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What do they do to prevent fraudulent charities?

E.g. a "save the seals" campaign that spends all its money on lavish salaries and helps one seal a year?

People paying only one dollar are unlikely to do much research.

<comment><USER12> From: <http://www.google.com/onetoday/faq.html>

How you find the nonprofits featured on One Today? All the nonprofits on One Today are members of Google for Nonprofits.

<http://www.google.com/nonprofits/>

<comment><USER13> Following that logic, if I open a Google Apps for Business account that must mean I run a honest and ethical company.

To become a 'member' of Google for Nonprofits, non-profits only need to show that they hold current 501(c)(3) status. That's a pretty weak filter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found it a bit weird that they never asked for my email, they just assumed that my Gmail account was my email.

</comment><comment><USER15> This sounds an awful lot like Philanthroper, which Mark Wilson eventually had to shut down. However, it's a slightly new angle, and I sincerely hope they succeed. I created a nonprofit Facebook app many years ago in the same space. It's tough, but Google has the resources to see it through.

</comment><comment><USER16> It won't fly just like this - You can't just ask people to download an app and donate a buck a day. You need an incentive. This will definitely work if the $1 gets the donor an "item of the day" from the play store, which Google can most certainly give out copies for "free".

<comment><USER17> That seems quite cynical. Kiva is quite successful, and they offer no incentives at all; you just loan $25, wait for it to be repaid, then loan it out again.

<http://www.kiva.org/>

<comment><USER18> Regardless, adding a tangible incentive will undoubtedly increase adoption and will cost Google little to nothing. It seems like a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me or is it really weird to request an invite to use an app which needs your donation?

<comment><USER20> The invitations are to create exclusivity and drive demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let's continue to encourage people to give to charities with shit effectiveness!

<comment><USER22> Same thing happens with whoever I give money to - taxes, paying off my wife's credit card, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Google has a long-standing commitment to supporting nonprofits and to do > doing good.

The best kind of good

/snark</comment>


The end of the world podcast with Josh Clark - <AUTHOR> http://www.theendwithjosh.com <comment><AUTHOR> It's a science driven podcast about the existentials risks we face.

Per it's own website:

Oct 4, 2018

We humans could have a bright future ahead of us that lasts billions of years. But we have to survive the next 200 years first.</comment>


Run Linqpad In Your Browser - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ehnpljhhcpkhpoeadppklipjlgfijdfk

<comment><USER2> This sort of "web applications" make me question the value of the Google's "web app store": so far the only true web application from the store I've seen, were Angry Birds. The rest I tried were either Flash applets, or, in this case, require some "Roozz plug-in" (which I wouldn't install). What's the value added by Google here? Only to tell me that I need Google Chrome, because my IE9 is "not supported by the web store just yet", and use Chrome to play Flash or launch installation of some weird plugin (which, by the way, doesn't seem to have problems with me using IE9)? Will such "web apps" even work in their own Chrome OS?

What's even more puzzling is why LinqPad needs all that? Downloading setup package from their own website is much more straightforward way that 1) doesn't discriminate people by browsers they use; 2) doesn't require any 3rd- party plug-ins which most of the people are grown to be wary of.</comment>


Tumblr Had $16.6 Million Left When Yahoo Bought It - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130808/tumblr-had-16-6-million-left-when-yahoo-bought-it/

<comment><USER2> Hard to say whether 16.6MM is a lot of money without knowing their burn, which I assume has to be quite substantial (just on bandwidth/hosting).

</comment><comment><USER3> They would have been fine.</comment>


Ask HN: Sales Engineer – Experiences - <AUTHOR> I'm 2 years shy of 40, have been a software engineer till now.
The last 5 years I've found myself enjoying social interactions far more, and am intrigued to go into sales engineering. I'd love to hear from people that did this.
What are the skillsets you leverage mostly, do you like it? <comment><USER2> Technical Sales is like any sub-specialized role.

For instance, you can have an MD who did their residency in Oncology, then sub-specialize into Radiation Oncology/Surgery via fellowship study. They take on additional training and develop experience to fulfill demand.

It can be incredibly rewarding (economically and psychologically) to be deeply sub-specialized in most domains…with Sales being one of the major exceptions.

Sales is a volume/transaction game. It's simply a matter of how much you can do to influence and transact revenue/consumption. You are not rewarded for deep mastery, your autonomy to learn and develop something impactful is only as wide as the revenue goals.

If you're still curious, I would encourage you to make it a short tour of duty, not a long-term professional path. I am personally interested in moving back into product/engineering…for one reason —

Leverage. A sales engineer has only one lever to pull, her time. A product engineer is fundamentally setup (especially in SaaS and zero marginal cost products) to succeed by virtue of the company creating inherent distribution and funding mechanisms to support the development and consumption of scalable product. The economic and psychological rewards are also much greater in product/engineering roles. This is especially at technology companies.

Experience: Transitioned from product/engineering. Recruited by a well known CEO for a Technical Sales role. Went through an acquisition and maintained the Technical Sales role for almost 10 years. Now looking for a Product/Engineering role.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't the second lever you can pull be your relationships? E.g. a close friend of mine works as a VP of Sales for EdTech startups. He knows every person to talk to at every school board. As long as the product is good he can (and does) bring in millions of dollars in deals with some phone calls and plane trips.

I can see what you mean by the tech leverage, but in my experience unless you're employee number is less than 10 or greater than 100,000 you don't really get rewarded or have the power to get rewarded from engineering changes. I've made changes that increased the bottom line directly by $100k+ a month but still only get a 3% raise unless I have a competing offer. I think the real trick is striking off as a consultant who charges based on results in that situation.

<comment><USER4> IME PreSales is not typically based on your direct sales. Your variable comp typically comes from the overall sales performance of the sales org.

I was at a job where I was the reason we closed a $2M deal. I'm not bragging - even the customer said it. I got no bonus or raise that year because overall the sales org didn't hit their target.

On the plus side, the base comp for PreSales tends to be quite good. So even some basic variable comp on top can give you a nice income. Plus, you can live in a low COL area and work for a company that pays higher COL salaries.

<comment><USER3> Great insight! That makes sense. One of my sales engineer friends pulls the low COL trick too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a software engineer, then I went into sales engineering for 8 years, then I went back to engineering.

The specific job role of a SE vary quite a bit by company. Some SEs are always tied to a salesperson, and some are given free rein to "sell". Another dimension that varies quite a bit is how much time you have in the office in preparation vs. meeting with customers.

(As an aside, I'm curious how Covid is impacting sales these days. I used to fly 6 plane segments a week as an SE.)

The biggest skills are speaking, listening, and thinking on your feet. Reading people and understanding whether points are landing is super important.

There's a performative aspect to sales which is quite different than a typical engineering job; it is somewhat akin to doing whiteboard interviews for a living.

The nice thing about sales is everything is tactical, and there's little long term planning. The downside is everything is about closing stuff for the quarter, and every new quarter is a clean slate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Solution Architect here. Here are a few things you should take into account:

\- You need obviously to know your stuff inside out, especially the technical side of things.

\- the split between tech knowledge and business knowledge will depend on the SE position/vertical and company, but do expect at least a 50% / 50%.

\- You need to develop you business skills. This doesn't include only finance/accounting jargons, but also soft skills such as presenting, talking, listening, dealing with angry customers, dealing with C-suite..etc.

\- Depending on the job specs, you will spend your time doing the following: \- Presentations \- PoC \- Demos \- Design and proposal documents \- Costing for the solution and putting a business case together (I do this in my current role, but it's rare that you'd need to do it) \- responding to RFP/RFI \- Working together with the sales team to land new accounts, or penetrate existing accounts. \- Working with delivery team to estimate project costs or design feedback.

Some rookie mistakes when beginning as an SE:

\- DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT talk about a solution before you listened to the customer, understood their pain points and let them speak. Unless they ask a specific question, try to ask questions and then just listen to them.

\- Talk slowly and with confidence. Know who your audiance is. If they are business people, prepare yourself and talk about ROI and how the solution will help them reduce cost, increase sale or make things easier. Do not talk technical stuff if your audiance doesn't understand it. Your audiance will mostly not care about frameworks, programing language, or the latest and greatest AWS service. You need to fight the urge to talk like a nerd, unless ofcourse the situation requires it.

\- Have a call/meeting with the area sales manager before you go see or talk to the customer. This is crucial for SE's. Some, and I say some Sales AM are only interested in their quarter numbers and will try to sell anything to the customer, even if the solution is not fit for purpose. Its your job to make sure the solution you are selling fits the customers requirements

I'm writing a guide for SE at the moment and might post it here. But for books I would suggest: Mastering the technical sales by John Care. Its nothing groundbreaking but its a good read.

I'm an introvert and actually enjoy working as an SE, but it's not for everyone. If you don't like dealing with customers and meetings, demos, writing a lot of documents then it's probably not for you.

The pay is generally quite good depending on the vertical/company.

<comment><USER4> >You need obviously to know your stuff inside out, especially the technical side of things.

>the split between tech knowledge and business knowledge will depend on the SE position/vertical and company, but do expect at least a 50% / 50%.

I agree with your post overall, but I'd say there is a much wider variance in this than indicated in your post. In smaller companies with a smaller sales force technical skills is very important. In bigger companies, it's entirely possible to be a "Solution Architect" where all you do is regurgitate talking points without actually having a good practical understanding of the product you are selling.

I only say this because it's important to evaluate the type of Sales Engineering role you want to be in and how much you want to use your technical skills. Some Sales Engineers primarily interact with technical people. Others spend most of their time with slides, flowcharts (e.g. Vizio), and managers. If you want to be in one type of role but end up in the other you'll be miserable.

>Some, and I say some Sales AM are only interested in their quarter numbers and will try to sell anything to the customer, even if the solution is not fit for purpose.

Here's a tough thing. If you are the Sales Engineer assigned to this type of sales rep, it's your job to peddle this crap to the customer and build demos and "solutions" that you don't even agree are good fit for the customer use case. It can really drain you if you are a generally honest person. But that's what you're paid to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You didn't ask about this, but I thought I'd tell you since you are coming from a software engineer background.

The other side of PreSales is Post-Sales Services. Basically, it's your job to build what Sales/PreSales sold to the customer.

In services you also interact a lot with clients, but it's less sales and your technical knowledge is more highly valued. You are more likely to become a trusted advisor. Your customer has already paid, so they know they want a real defined thing of value and not just have a demo. Finally, since you actually have to build something and not just an MVP, you use your technical skills. The major downside is that some jobs are very travel heavy.

A lot of people bounce between PreSales/PostSales before settling on one or the other. Which one fits best depends on your personality.

<comment><USER2> This manifests as a technical sales role in the "Customer Success" organization or a post-sales implementation consulting role in the Services organization.

It's effectively a "retention" sales role or consulting role for SaaS companies who value recurring revenue.

It may feel less "sales-y", but ultimately your compensation is usually dependent on recurring revenue or billed hours.

The experience in these organizations will be highly dependent on the culture of the technical sales team and the kinds of customers you work to enable. Which is usually a derivative function of the kind of market your company addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I transitioned to sales engineering last year. My software engineering opportunities had plateaued and I was not interested in management (I hate meetings). I considered going back to consulting, but health insurance prices make that impossible.

Part of the job is to make your quirky company appear to be operating smoothly from a customer point of view. You must give the customer warm fuzzy feelings about spending lots on your product. A prerequisite of this is to know and be able to communicate about your specific product domain very well.

I get paid really well for my knowledge and it's very satisfying. The workload comes in waves and is very different from the grind of coding. If I do want to code, I can code for my company or the customer.

</comment><comment><USER8> depends inside sales or outside sales? if someone is generating the lead and all you have to do is close it, might be easier. if you have to hit the pavement and cold call to generate leads, might be tough. you should read up on sales, as someone else mentioned, there's then the post sales which might be easier, where you're pretty much running demos and helping them setup things. lot's of listening and having strong empathy for the customer to know what problem they are having, being able to communicate clearly so they can immediately understand the values you are presenting, those I'll say are the core skills.</comment>


Show HN: NJ Tranist iOS App – Showing ETA in Notification Center - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nj-bus-now/id903724678?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> iOS 8 App I made demonstrating the new Notification Center feature and helping NJ Transit commuter figure out the ETA for their bus at their bus stop.</comment>


Pierre Sprey on the F-35 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw <comment><USER3> When you need the absolute best for something, you need to specialize. That's why there have historically been so many different kinds of aircraft, each with relatively discrete missions.

The F-35 is a terrible aircraft, and the procurement is deeply suspect. The South Korean acquisition process leaked some surprising information about the acquisition process and the F-35 failed the relatively modest criteria the Koreans had set and an older aircraft (F-15) to be purchased. At the time there was loads of news about the F-35 failing the acquisition and it even made it into Aviation week. Doing a google search now, it looks like it was a smooth process from RFP to acquisition and I can't find many of the older articles [1]

The rumor is that Lockheed bribed the hell out of the Korean National Assembly and "won" the initial round of acquisition, but the agency in Korea responsible for the acquisition (DAPA) saw right through it and awarded the final contract to Boeing.

The National Assembly got upset, Lockheed got upset and probably some U.S. congressmen got upset and the entire acquisition was tossed out "recompeted" and of course the F-35 won the second time. It's a sad joke and I can't even begin to guess at the acquisition shenanigans that happened in the U.S.

1 - [http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130928/DEFREG/309280008...](http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130928/DEFREG/309280008/F-35-Back- S-Korea-Fighter-Contest)

 _edit_ a great movie about this is the movie "Pentagon Wars" which includes this great scene.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)

<comment><USER4> The F35 is a dog and I suspect as a Brit we are going to get stuck with the thing when everyone else pulls out.

<comment><USER5> You think the US won't buy them? Our military bought and paid for hundreds of F-111s, the last plane we designed to do everything for everyone, with the result that it wasn't useful anyplace. (Yes, we've tried this trick before.) And that was in the 1960s and '70s; if anything, the military procurement process has gotten a whole lot more corrupt.

<comment><USER6> The F-111 was actually good for Australia, though the purchase was sort of a 'mistake' at the time - it's extremely long range suited our northern defence, where the airstrips are few and far between. One defence person said in an aside to me 'The F-111 has enough range to get from Darwin to Jakarta and back without refueling'...

<comment><USER7> Menzies said as much quite openly after the confrontation with Indonesia following the Malaysian Independence.

If you're near Caloundra they have an open cockpit weekend coming up.

[http://www.qam.com.au/ocw/ocw.htm](http://www.qam.com.au/ocw/ocw.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't the whole idea of manned fighter jets antiquated?

And if this tech isn't dated already, the Pentagon plans to still be using these jets in 2065. ([http://online.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looks-to-lower- costs...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looks-to-lower-costs- of-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program-1402610449))

I don't see a strong reason the Air Force should be investing so much in fighter jets and not focusing on drone technology.

He mentions dogfights, do those even happen anymore? Why participate in a manned dogfight when you can simply send drones -- and if they are shot down, send one more, or one hundred more.

The U.S. military is always fighting the last war. In this case, they aren't even fighting the last several wars, but are still locked into Cold War, pre- drone thinking.

<comment><USER9> Remote controlled drones have limitations due to electronic warfare/jamming (not to mention security, see the one the US lost in Iran). There's also an issue with lag.

Actually autonomous ones are as far as I know only good for static targets (effectively they are reusable cruise missiles).Close air support or deciding whether to engage an enemy airplane or not gets tricky.

<comment><USER10> Aren't the missiles they fire subject to the same jamming problems?

<comment><USER11> Depends on the mechanism used by the missile to follow the target. My impression is that most missiles don't have guidance systems that require direct communication after launch,

<comment><USER12> A whole bunch of missiles actually do, like the Sparrow and Standard.

The longer range ones really can use it to increase hit probability. Or so I've read is true for the Phoenix and AIM-120 missiles, classed as "fire and forget". and the newest Standard missile uses a AIM-120 derived head with a bigger antenna. And I'm sure still depends on mid-course corrections (for that matter, I've read the current models self-destruct if they doesn't get guidance fairly soon after launch).

<comment><USER13> The Sparrow and Standard are "semi-active radar homing missiles", meaning that they have a radar seeker head and no emitter. They require an external illumination radar (from the aircraft or launch platform) to light up their target.

The AIM-120 uses a datalink to guide the missile close to the target, after which the missile's internal radar emitter goes active, and the missile locks onto the nearest target that it finds. This is because the radar on the missile is not nearly as powerful as the radar on the aircraft. So it's not truly a "fire and forget" missile, at least if a high probability of kill is desired. I believe the Phoenix is similar.

<comment><USER12> Per what I've read elsewhere, and the Wikipedia article ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_missile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_missile)), for long range attack the Phoenix has a rather unique flight profile, it climbs to 80,000 or so feet and cruises there, then dives down. Per the article, at 11 miles it activates its radar, and I'll bet given the distance and its bigger size, bigger antenna, it gets a bigger view than the AIM-120. Still, it has the capability of and uses course corrections from its plane.

<comment><USER14> I believe the Phoenix usually falls off its plane (the F-14) directly into the ocean. The Tomcat pilots then RTB to the bar and tell each other how great they are. The Phoenix is the Yugo to the AMMRAM's Ferrari. They are different generations of weapons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Q: What is the point of this plane?

A: The real mission is for the US government to send money to Lockheed.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw#t=443](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw#t=443)

By that standard, the F-35 has been a trememdous success!

<comment><USER16> Someone once mentioned a long time ago, that this airplane is garbage for one reason only. Price. Let's say it performed flawlessly, succeeded in all it's goals, it would still be garbage. Because the point being that you counter that with a few cheap drones that all suck individually, but dollar for dollar you can get the hundred drones required to take these aircraft down, while the owners of the F-35 will simply not be able to keep up money wise.

$200 MM is a VERY hefty price. Hell 5 of these guys will cover our education needs across the whole damn united states.

<comment><USER17> Do you really think that drones would be able to take down a F-35?

<comment><USER18> Predator drones have enough payload to carry several AIM-120s (where to mount more than one is an open question), which is a ~40mi range fire-and-forget air-to-air missile. Whether the F-35's stealth/avoidance is good enough, I don't know. But if you had say a dozen drones patroling an area, I don't know if I'd want to take an F-35 nearby.

So no, I don't think drone tech is good enough to down F-35s, but I think with sufficient zerg tactics, it could deny airspace.

<comment><USER19> The Predator does not have a radar which would allow it to launch the AMRAAM at long range. The AIM-120 has a radar for terminal guidance, but it relies on the aircraft to pass target information for early flight.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but that's not the issue. That problem can be solved in a hackish fashion for a LOT less than $200mm and perhaps even in an elegant fashion for less.

If every Predator gets a 100W wideband transmitter and SOME of them get instead of weapons the equipment necessary to process the reflections and do the calcs then the others can get that target information and blammo.

If there are 100 Predators for every F35 in the combat zone and they ALL turn on their transmitters simultaneously at some kind of interval you're never going to know which one is carrying weapons and which one is command and control. So you can't do prioritized targeting and thus you're shooting blind. Yeah you can shoot down some of them but once you're out of missiles that's it.

Do we have to worry about 3rd world countries being able to muster this kind of response? No. But there are plenty of industrialized countries that could, and they could bleed us dry one $200mm plane at a time.

<comment><USER17> I think there's a general disconnect between HN users and how the defense industry works.

When you are designing a weapons system designed to kill people, you cannot just design something 'in a hackish fashion'. No, this shit has got to work correctly all the time.

The cheapest Predator drone cost about $5M and top flight Predators and Global Hawks cost between $20M-50M. This means flying 100 of them is not reasonable. UAVs are also not autonomous and need manned pilots. Even if you were to build 100 drones, are you going to pay for 100 extra pilots, create some kind of airport that can house 100 drones, keeping them all fueled and maintained in the desert?

Kinda naive to think that you can just use SV start up philosophies in this application.

<comment><USER20> > I think there's a general disconnect between HN users and how the defense > industry works.

Agreed, and I stated EXACTLY that in another portion of the thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907637)

> When you are designing a weapons system designed to kill people, you cannot > just design something 'in a hackish fashion'. No, this shit has got to work > correctly all the time.

No, with that part of engineering as with EVERY part of engineering: it depends. Do you want UNIT reliability or SYSTEM reliability? Does every plane have a literal 100% chance of intercepting every target it is tasked with? No, of course not. But the missiles do, you say? Again wrong. But surely SOME portion of the entire system will work ALL THE TIME! Nope, no engineer worth his salt will give you a 100% guarantee for anything as unknown as "stopping all possible threats".

Furthermore plenty of systems that are supposed to be very reliable are made up of less reliable parts. The whole Star Wars program was based on defense in depth where no one layer of system was going to stop 100% of the warheads but multiple layers acting in concert would be able to (presumably) stop them all or almost all. Hackish is fine provided that you've got substantially overlapping coverage from multiple command and control drones. No one drone has to work 100% guaranteed because even at only a 95% success rate (which is abysmal compared to the "all the time" demand you're making) with three overlapping zones gives you .05 * .05 * .05 = .0125% chance of failing. I'll take 1/8 of a chance of failure per thousand incidents as successful enough.

Again, I'm not talking about having 100 drones with 100 pilots but perhaps having 100 drones with 9 pilots for the command and control drones (one for every 10 mules) and some kind of a very rudimentary, randomized loiter algorithm for the mules.

> Kinda naive to think that you can just use SV start up philosophies in this > application.

I want to say a bunch of really snarky stuff in response. I'm an outsider to SV; I grew up in MN, went to school in FL and now I live in TX. None of these places ever get accused of being even SLIGHTLY SV-ish in nature so I don't see how I deserve that kind of comment. Ultimately though you've made a lot of assumptions that don't necessarily hold. The idea that you're going to defeat the US using the same kind of procurement and whatever that the US uses is a non-starter. You don't try and beat the US at a symmetric war but you can defeat them with an asymmetric one. We're losing how many lives and how much money in Iraq and Afghanistan right now to IEDs which are what, 10 notches below the fancy shit we have? And yet all our fancy airplanes haven't saved a single soldier from an IED that I'm aware of.

I'm not necessarily saying that you absolutely 100% can use SV philosophies in war and win, but I am saying that the notion that the way the US military does it is the ONLY way to do it isn't correct either.

<comment><USER17> I don't know why you are referring to the Star Wars program since it was not a program that was ever fielded.

Anyway, so is your strategy to fire multiple missiles at a time for each target? Assuming it's possible for UAVs to engage air targets (which they cannot right now), how many are you going to shoot off for each target, at the cost of $0.5M for each missile, just because you developed an algorithm in a 'hackish' manner?

If you gave each pilot 10 drones to control, good luck trying to execute evasive maneuvers on all of them when they come under attack.

<comment><USER21> Evasive maneuvers are something that a probabilistic algorithm tied into good sensors is probably better at performing for a swarm than a human would be, especially if the performance characteristics of these drones were made to be more extreme than most jets.

<comment><USER17> 1\. Drones do not perform anywhere near as well as a fighter jet.

2\. There aren't even any autonomous UAVs right now, why do you think you will be able to make one that can also autonomously evade a missile?

<comment><USER21> 1\. That's not a characteristic inherent to drones, that's just what we've done to date. And there are remote controlled fighter jets that the military uses for practice.

2\. Because it seems well within our capabilities to do some basic missile evasion AI, that's just a small subset of the challenge of making a fully autonomous UAV. You need to identify the missile and its trajectory, identify its flight and kill characteristics, and then identify the various actions you could take and evaluate their likelihood of successfully evading the missile. Then you carry that flight plan out. Rinse and repeat until you're no longer in danger.

<comment><USER17> So you are saying:

1\. We should make a drone have the same flight performance capabilities as a fighter jet, which will make it cost more money.

2\. We should spend even more money to create an AI system with the exact same capabilities as a trained fighter pilot. Probably not an easy feat.

<comment><USER21> I'm not recommending that they do it one way or another - there're a lot of new possibilities that should be explored, which means that more of the same might not be the way to go. All I was saying that it's silly to say categorically that "drones are slow", because they certainly don't have to be - if anything, they have the potential to be even faster and more maneuverable than manned fighter jets, because you can get rid of a lot of the cruft and restrictions related to keeping a pilot alive and letting them pilot effectively. No more canopy, no more cockpit shielding, no more visible instrumentation and layout requirements, no more ejection seat, no more oxygen supply, no more human survivable g-limits, etc.

I'm also not advocating for a completely autonomous drone, just saying that automatically flying a plane to evade a missile doesn't seem terribly difficult, as far as AI problems go, and the amounts of money thrown at these sorts of things are absurdly large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The F-35 is actually a pretty awesome jet. Is it better than the F-22 in air to air combat? Nope.

Does it have to be? Here's a similar jet: the Dassault Rafale. Its also multirole. Its not nearly as good as the F-35. Is it better than the F-22 in air to air combat? Nope. Did it shot down a F-22, ever? Yes (yes - they have official combat simulations with real planes, only the missiles are not real - and those are made to sell the airplanes so there is no incentive to go easy). Does that means its better then? Nope, still not. Most of the time, it loses.

There's several points here:

\- you dont have to be the best tool for the job to be the best all rounder.

\- sometimes the best all rounder is better than the best tool for the job. its cheaper (imagine 3 or 4 F-22 scale programs vs 1 F-35 program), and it does the job well enough for many tasks. in fact, air to air superiority is one of the only tasks where you currently need to specialize. Turns out that the army has done this choice as well and has the F-22.

\- views you can see or read of what is "better" or "worse" regarding fighter aircrafts is most of the time completely wrong and extremely misleading. Most people have extremely, extremely high financial interests in this. Billions and billions. War is a very juicy business.

One of the points of the "co designer of the F16" (mind you, id take a F15 over a F16 ANY DAY) are the "small wings" of the F35 giving it mediocre lift.

I like this one. The F-35 has better lift and better aerodynamics than the F-16 or the F-15, or the F/A-18. But its non-obvious. This engineer knows that. The general public doesn't. (note that the main reason for this, beside better design for aerodynamics is that the body of the plane provides most of the lift).

Some of the other commons points are generally either plain false, either have truth in them but pushed further than the reality.

<comment><USER23> Not sure why people are downvoting you.

Do I think the F-35 is a great jet? Hard to say since it's still in LRIP. But it's reported by pilots who have flown it to be more maneuverable than F-15/16/18\. Not as fast as the F-22, and not as stealthy. Longer legged than the F-18 (either version).

Where it falls down is in cost, largely due to it requiring so much commonality between the three versions. If the cost stays above $150M a copy (depends on how you calculate that, and it's a hard thing to do), it's too pricey. The F-22 would have been better for A2A, and if the line had been kept open, the Raptor's cost would have ended up below that. So if LM can get the cost down closer to the $100m mark, it'll be fine. New build F-16s are over $80M, the Silent Eagle was expected to cost North of $100m, and neither would be able to handle the role of the F-35.

<comment><USER22> People don't like controversial opinions. It's easier to go with the flow.

Im not sure the cost is such a huge deal compared to 3 concurrent programs that make cheaper planes, due to the program cost. itd probably be about the same granted that all 3 program would have been decently successful.

comparing to 1 program doesnt work if the plane fullfill 3 roles - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't disagree that the F-35 is poor in every respect (read up on the South Korean procurement vs the F-18), but I am a little puzzled at one part of the video. Is there an actual source that current stealth is easily beatable by long wave radar? I acknowledge the expertise of Pierre Sprey, but I have my doubts on how easy it is to beat.

<comment><USER25> [http://news.usni.org/2014/05/14/can-chinas-new-destroyer- fin...](http://news.usni.org/2014/05/14/can-chinas-new-destroyer-find-u-s- stealth-fighters)

[http://www.wired.com/2011/06/stealth-tech- obsolete/](http://www.wired.com/2011/06/stealth-tech-obsolete/)

It is more complicated than "LOL LONG WAVE RADAR I WIN".

"The other problem that the defender must contend with is the fact that the L-band and most parts of the S-band have radar resolution cells that are too large to provide a weapons quality track. Effectively, even if a defender can detect and track an attacking stealthy fighter, that defender may not be able to guide a missile onto that target.

That being said, both the SPY-1 and the forthcoming Raytheon Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) operate in higher frequency portions of the S-band and are able to generate weapons quality tracks. If the Chinese system is similar—and there are indications that it is—it could generate fire-control quality guidance for the HQ-9B missiles."

Stealth provides __some __ability to evade however the most modern systems that are getting rolled out in the next 5 years are going to able to track a F-35 and engage it without significant hardship.

Stealth at this point is really just another layer of defense, like decoys. It'll decrease the distance at which you can truly kill a F-35. However, at 200 million each, you can afford to build a large number of missiles & mobile SAMs to take out a F-35.

<comment><USER26> Something people apparently generally don't realize is that the stealth claim has only ever been about the front profile of the aircraft. Nobody is claiming the F-22 is invisible, just that it's rather hard to see from a distance if it's coming straight at you. And going straight at enemy fighters and air defense radars is the role of the F-22. Radar onboard an enemy fighter is not going to be long wave. So I don't really get Sprey's claim that stealth is a scam. The stealth claims are modest and accurate as best I can tell.

<comment><USER27> The biggest problem is that stealth has always been surrounded by political demands all the way back to the first stealth aircraft. Given Sprey's target audience with the interview and the way he chose his words (particularly at first), I think it's likely that he was addressing the prevailing belief that stealth aircraft are invisible aircraft. That said, you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the difference between being stealth (re: invisible, such as what Sprey's railing against) and being low-observable.

Public comments about the JSF program by Lockheed, military spokespersons, and congressional supporters alike have all touted the plane's stealth capabilities to an extent that makes me wonder how many actually understand the difference between the two. Given the likelihood that operational demands (particularly close air support for the Marines with the F-35B... not that CAS missions could every be very stealthy) will make the entire point moot, I really don't understand all the emphasis on it.

<comment><USER25> Ya. Stealth made sense on the F-22 with its air superiority role.

The F-35....not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think Sprey's comments need to be taken with a huge grain of salt considering he thought the F-15 would be a huge failure. The F-15 is everything he didn't want in a fighter, yet it's probably the most successful jet fighter in history.

<comment><USER12> Although in all fairness it must be pointed out the Air Force put it's thumb on the scales, you might say.

The original F-16 concept included a thrust to weight ratio > 1, like the F-15's, plus 20 minutes of supercruise ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise) which we've only achieved lately with the F-22). Sufficiently strict requirements with the low weight and low(ish) cost that it e.g. sacrificed night and all-weather capability.

The Air Force wasn't interested in such a bird, but they were interested in a fighter-bomber based on it, which e.g. required serious additions to the frame and cost it the super high performance.

But in an AU perhaps the original F-16 would have turned out to be a magnificent fighter.

<comment><USER23> Oh, the F-16 is a fantastic fighter. It's a great fighter-bomber as well, but it's been exceptional at dogfighting since day one. The USAF just doesn't use it for air supremacy since the F-15 is tasked for that.

The USAF was really interested in a "cheap" aircraft that could replace the F-4/A7 in quantity, and function in a swing role as a bomber if it wasn't required for A2A work.

<comment><USER28> Having worked on the F-16 in my first job (Jovial runtime libraries) I have a real affinity for it. Even today you can buy a whole boatload of F16s for the cost of 1 F35. I think the plane is too expensive to use as an everyday FB.

<comment><USER23> Not sure about a boatload. Current build (Block 60) Vipers are close to $100m depending on how you calculate the cost of spares etc. It'll be interesting to see how much the UAE pays for the Block 61s they requested this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Love this guy, and love the interview where the interviewer

\- LETS THE INTERVIEWEE SPEAK

\- listens so that she's able to accurately summarize what the guy said!

Great moment -- thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone interested in fighter design process should check out the biography "Boyd". John Boyd is acknowledged as the 'father' of the F15 and F16.

<comment><USER31> I was about to say the same. Correction: him and the fighter mafia hated the F-15. His work lead to F-16 and F/A-18.

<comment><USER32> >Correction: him and the fighter mafia hated the F-15. His work lead to F-16 and F/A-18.

If I recall correctly the F-15 was partly his baby but he only got in mid-way so couldn't make it as good as he wanted it. Then the Lightweight Fighter program was run by him and generated the YF-16 and YF-17 prototypes. The YF-16 won the competition and became the F-16. Then the Navy didn't like a single engine plane (or didn't like an air force plane) and took the YF-17 and made the F-18.

So I doubt they hated the F-15 but they definitely liked the F-16 better. I'm not sure how happy they were about the F-18 given that it was a run-around their LWF process.

<comment><USER31> Oh I think you're right. My memory of that book is a bit spotty and I forgot some of the nuances of the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Lockheed's F-117 stealth fighter was developed in a breakneck 30 months by a > close-knit team of 50 engineers led by an experienced fighter designer named > Alan Brown and overseen by seven government employees. Brown said he > exercised strict control over the design effort, nixing any proposed feature > of the plane that might add cost or delay or detract from its main mission.

> The F-35, by contrast, is being designed by some 6,000 engineers led by a > rotating contingent of short-tenure managers, with no fewer than 2,000 > government workers providing oversight. The sprawling JSF staff, partially a > product of the design's complexity, has also added to that complexity like a > bureaucratic feedback loop, as every engineer or manager scrambles to add > his or her specialty widget, subsystem or specification to the plane's > already complicated blueprints … and inexperienced leaders allow it.

For those interested in a deeper look at why the F-35 is so, well, F'd, this is a great read:

[https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its- alli...](https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got- stuck-with-the-worlds-worst-new-warplane-5c95d45f86a5)

It basically comes down to stupid design considerations forced upon the program by the various branches(mainly the Marine Corps) and how easily blinded Congress was by the notion of a (supposedly cheaper) one-size-fits-all solution.

<comment><USER34> I'm guessing this is an outgrowth of modern management practices that explicitly do not value engineering experience and believe "process" will produce the desired result.

People are interchangeable, there is no institutional knowledge, and management can solve all technical issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The best thing one can say about the F-35 is something akin to what rocket designer Robert Truax once said about the Space Shuttle, that it "represents a truly marvelous implementation of an absolutely absurd concept."

If you've read the "Boyd" biography mentioned here by other commenters, you'll recognize many of Boyd's and Sprey's criticisms of the so-called "F-X" fighter procurement program (which eventually led to the F-15) in his critique of the F-35. [1]

None of the Fighter Mafia actually "designed" any of these aircraft, but Boyd, Sprey, Christie and others did play a pivotal role in changing how the Pentagon defined and proved the _specifications_ of the fighters it was buying. The F-X was supposed to be a larger, swing-wing, multi-role behemoth, similar to the abysmal F-111, which Boyd proved to Pentagon brass to be inferior to virtually _all_ enemy fighters, by way of his brilliant "Energy- Maneuverability" theory. In this way, Boyd and Sprey influenced the final design of the F-15, but to a much lesser extent than the designs of the F-16 or A-10. [2]

One key point Sprey brings up in several of his other interviews on the F-35 topic (which he curiously leaves out of this one) is that, regardless of the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the F-22 or F-35, neither will ever be as successful as the historically-great fighters like the P-51, F-4, F-15, or F-16, simply because they'll never be built in sufficient numbers.

For a fighter to be great, its _pilots_ must also be great, and to do that they must train regularly and often, something which has proven impossible with the low dispatch reliability of these complex fifth-gen fighters. Sprey notes that in WWII, the U.S. P-51 fleet triumphed over the vastly superior German fleet of ME-262s, by first developing tactics that could defeat this amazing jet (i.e., shooting them down while taking off or landing), and because there were simply more P-51s available to fight.

Sprey and Boyd were right about a few things: build them light (which helps make them fast and maneuverable), build them cheap, and build lots of them.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Or...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Origins)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93maneuverability_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93maneuverability_theory)

<comment><USER36> To add to the WW2 examples - The German Bf-109 wasn't the best fighter of the war by most standards, yet it got flown by arguably the best fighter pilots in history (thanks to the insane Luftwaffe policy of keeping the best pilots on the front line in perpetuity), and so is responsible for more aerial victories than any other aircraft.

Also small, also cheap, and the Germans built scads of them. You could really see the difference in training and experience, however, toward the end of the war, where badly trained German pilots were thoroughly outclassed by their Allied opponents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In the video Sprey critisizes the F-15, which is not unsurprising considering the history of him going off and designing the F-16. But isn't the F-15 regarded as a great aircraft? It costs nearly double, but has a good record and capabilities, and is perhaps better than the F-16 at everything but slow dogfighting.

<comment><USER38> Yes, but the excellent F-15 was a synthesis between the ideas of the Figher Mafia[1] which Sprey represents and the more technocratic elements of the Air Force. By contrast, the F-35 seems to be an example of the worst excesses of the later.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pierre Sprey is way off base on practically everything.

Almost no air-to-air combat starts out within visual range and this has been the case since the 1980s when the F-16 became available.

Part of the reason the F-16 became popular is that its cheaper to buy and operate compared to the F-4 and F-15, and even the F-16 Block 5 had an avionics package that made it quite capable in combat and achieved its first Air-to-Air kill in 1980. Smaller jets like the F-5E and the SAAB Gripen don't have nearly the same combat radius on internal fuel.

The F-35 is one of the most agile jets available when loaded for combat. Most of the claims about the F-16 are in airshow configuration and not combat loaded with drop tanks.

<comment><USER12> " _Almost no air-to-air combat starts out within visual range..._ "

Until the politicians require visual confirmation of the target. Which is exactly what happened in Vietnam under LBJ. At which point Sparrows were dead weight with a lot of drag.

<comment><USER39> The target is usually acquired and tracked on radar first. Getting visual ID before firing the missile is a different story. In Iraq '91 they required IFF transponder status to confirm a target as hostile which isn't always reliable.

By 2003, the USAF made extensive use of E-3 AWACS and fighters required clearance from Joint Air Operations Center before engaging a target. The E-3 would vector the fighters for an intercept so it wouldn't start visually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's a little bit early to write the F-35 off as a failure, unless you're talking purely about the financial side. Certainly it's a failure as a down- market F-22 with strike capability. It's far too expensive for that.

We won't really know what kind of air superiority platform the F-35 is until it's had a few run-ins with other modern fighters. Stealth capabilities and superior sensors may be more than enough to make up for lack of maneuverability. Or maybe not.

</comment><comment><USER41> Many posters here are making definitive statements. Does anyone have expertise in this issue or know what they are talking about beyond repeating what they have read?

IIRC, Pierre Sprey represents one side in a political battle about aircraft design, but I hope someone here knows more about it than I do.

<comment><USER42> Anybody with current experience can likely not talk about it, due to security clearance issues.

<comment><USER43> Exactly this. Lockheed tells its employees to be very careful about discussing the F-35 in public, lest information be inadvertently disclosed. Obtaining and maintaining a security clearance is a condition of employment in the defense world, so those who know and could clear up many of the disagreements cannot really say much. Even disclosing that you work on the program is not encouraged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> hey guys, it's ok. The chinese jacked the f-35 designs. Removed the VTOL aspect, narrowed the chassis, and now it's a much MUCH better aircraft. Hopefully they're cool and let us buy them back from them!

<comment><USER45> Maybe this is all just an elaborate false-flag-y thing? The Chinese were allowed to "acquire" plans to a shitty plane, and in a few years the US Govt will be all "whoops that plane sucked, we've been working on a different plane, here it is"

<comment><USER44> I don't think our budget could handle another JSF disaster :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "The point is to spend money. That is the mission of the airplane, is for the US Congress to send money to Lockheed."

</comment><comment><USER47> There are uncanny parallels here with software projects typically getting late, over budget and a complete mess of conflicting goals. In our industry, we have found that this typically happens when people detecting requirements are neither the end users nor the engineers. Best projects are the ones where people behind it are playing both roles. May be its time for military to instill this culture by assigning generals who are themselves pilots _and_ engineers to lead such projects.

</comment><comment><USER48> Lots of lessons for software engineers in this lovely interview. Like Knuth, Pierre Sprey seems to relish "beauty in the particular".

"The goal of generalization had become so fashionable that a generation of mathematicians had become unable to relish beauty in the particular, to enjoy the challenge of solving quantitative problems, or to appreciate the value of technique" \- From the preface to Concrete Mathematics; Graham, Knuth and Patashnik

</comment><comment><USER49> How much would it have then cost to develop three different aircraft?

The lightweight fighter program (LWF), which spawned F-16 and F/A-18, was done for daylight dogfights, but both aircraft have picked a lot of electronics during the years and are used for laser guided precision bombing (something for which you needed an A-10 in the nineties still).

Further, AFAIK, the primary US adversary back in the seventies, the Soviet Union, was much closer technologically than what they or others are now. Russia and China are catching up though.

So a "good enough" "jack of all trades" aircraft might make a lot of sense. You might just need less aircraft in total. The US Air Force and Navy have been simplifying their inventory a lot in the past years anyway. The F-14 and A-6 are retired for example, with worse aircraft (for specific missions) used instead. You can always go in a more "hot rod" direction - but what will be the price?

General Dynamics' Harry Hillaker is the real designer of the F-16. Boyd, Riccioni, Christie and Sprey were part of the LWF mafia, while General Dynamics designed the actual F-16.

GD used a lot of resources, did a very thorough analysis and spent a huge amount of time in the wind tunnel. You can see the very visual design evolution in various stories about it. (Incidentally the LWF third place competitor Boeing design looked a lot like the GD one, as did the Vought design.)

Here is one history: [http://www.codeonemagazine.com/f16_article.html?item_id=131](http://www.codeonemagazine.com/f16_article.html?item_id=131)

IMHO, the fatness-inducing lift fan space could have been ditched to make the airplane perform better. A separate less commonal version could have been created for VTOL use.

</comment><comment><USER50> How does any pair ("co-designer" implies two designers, doesn't it?) of people design anything as complicated as an F-16? I've only worked on rockets and missiles, but the design of something as small and simple as the old Harpoon anti-ship missile is a pretty complex interplay between guidance-and-control, aerodynamics, propulsion and structures.

<comment><USER51> Project leaders, primarily. As in, "This is what I want, and this is how you are going to engineer it."

<comment><USER50> It doesn't work that way. Some nominal "designer" might doing engineering drawings, but with so much input from other engineers that what you might think of as "design" just doesn't exist.

Oh, sure, Old Man Douglas might have drawn the outline of the DC-7's tail up in the old "lofting room", or someone said "one engine" for the F-16, or "elliptical domes" for the Titan fuel and oxidizer tanks, but after that, saying someone is THE designer of a large project is just a fib.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Wow, I didn't know stealth was a scam. WW2 radars can be used to find modern "stealth" planes.

<comment><USER12> As other discussions have pointed out, that's not all that useful if you can't then kill them, which existent long wave radars are rather bad at.

<comment><USER53> An old, Russian, mobile, vacuum tube-using radar system guided an SA-3 as it shot down an F-117 over Serbia. What makes you think modern HF radars that use high-tech computers won't be able to do better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think most weapons are huge failure, at least for their openly stated goals.

This design [0] from Burt Rutan [1] is beautiful in its simplicity. While it doesn't have the mission of objectives as the F35, I'd rather have 300 Mudfighters than a single F35.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg)

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

</comment><comment><USER55> I never understood why they went with such design when they have proper aircraft designs to evolve. Watch the russians: they've evolved the SU models over the years proving that it is better than create something from 0 again. Su-27, Su-30, Su-37 all of them are far more polyvalent than the F-35 and the F-22.

</comment><comment><USER56> The F-35 reminds me of the space shuttle. It tries do to many different things, with many different requirements and ends up being much more expensive, much less reliable and not particularly good at any of the things it was designed to do.

I wonder what these projects have in common...

</comment><comment><USER57> As an aside, it's kind of humbling to think how different the scope and the impact that these design decisions make versus the impact that most of us work on can make.

Very few of us can say that a design mistake on our part is the difference between life and death.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm reminded of the short story "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke:

[http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html](http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html)

</comment><comment><USER59> I am watching this video and thinking about unix design philosophy:

"Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features."

</comment><comment><USER60> Australia has just ordered 86 of these little beauties.

</comment><comment><USER61> And I thought we (Europe) have problems with our EuroFighter which wasn't able to take off if it was too cold...

</comment><comment><USER62> Perhaps it is a good news. Junk airplanes means fewer wars. I am sure EU and US could make decent airplane very fast when some credible threat emerges.

</comment><comment><USER63> Direct link to video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw)

<comment><USER64> Yes. We changed the url from [http://digg.com/video/the-designer-of- the-f-15-explains-just...](http://digg.com/video/the-designer-of- the-f-15-explains-just-how-inanely-stupid-the-f-35-is), which points to this.

Pierre Sprey, btw, is an interesting character. After retiring from military projects he became a record producer specializing in highbrow jazz obscurities. An original hipster!

<comment><USER4> Title is still wrong, Pierre Sprey designed the F16 (co-designed) not the F15.

<comment><USER31> Also the father of the A-10, which the air force hates but is so useful. He arrived at the design after studying how air power was used in WWII. We still get a lot of utility out of the A-10. The air force is of course trying to kill it still.

Source: Boyd - [http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed- ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed- ebook/dp/B000FA5UEG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403040077&sr=8-1&keywords=boyd)

<comment><USER65> Why does the airforce hate the A-10? That thing is terrifying.

<comment><USER66> Just a guess: the A-10 is designed as a support aircraft for ground troops, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Army gets to claim a decisive victory. The F-15 is an air-superiority fighter, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Air Force claims a decisive victory. Inter- service rivalry is a Thing...from the POV of an ordinary citizen, it doesn't matter as long as we whup the bad guys, but from the POV of a career military bureaucrat it matters a lot whether the victory is credited to his branch of the service.

<comment><USER31> Yep exactly. The A-10 isn't glamorous. The air force hates interdiction missions even though they're among the most useful. The A-10 is also relatively cheap and can loiter over the battlefield for a long time

<comment><USER12> Wait, I thought they liked interdiction missions (e.g. keeping the enemy from resupplying the front), and that's congruent with their service goals.

Close air support is another matter altogether. Ugly, dirty, and a high potential for friendly fire causalities, which makes them look very bad in today's unrealistic no errors allowed environment. E.g. nowadays in our too common non-existential wars if an officer flying a plane hits friendlies, I'd suspect his career will be over.

Of course, the A-10 can do both, but the greater ability to do close air support, unlike say the F-111 back when we were flying it, means it will be called up to do so.

Another issue is that things like GPS guidance means close air support can be done without getting as up close and personal, and if the guys on the ground supply their own coordinates instead of the target's, as I seem to recall having happened at least once, it's on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> "The point is to spend money. That is the mission of the airplane...is for the US Congress to send money to Lockheed Martin."</comment>


Libtmux – pilot your tmux session via python - git-pull https://github.com/tony/libtmux <comment><AUTHOR> Where could this be used?

<comment> git-pull Hi, thanks for your question. I'm going to cross-post this from a reddit comment that asked the same thing.

tmux[1] is oriented toward commandline users on posix-like systems. libtmux is a python library to help you script and automate tmux. it abstracts the concept of the server, its sessions, their windows and panes [2] into a herarchy you can easily navigate, even with a live tmux session.

I don't know if you use cli, tmux, or a tmux session manager (tmuxinator, teamocil, tmuxp) already, so its hard to tailor this answer specifically.

 _command line_

a good deal of programmers, sysadmins, etc. use the terminal routinely throughout their day. some even go so far as to swear off a graphical IDE all together, and use screen or tmux with a combination of an editor like vim, emacs and others.

if you primarily use windows and don't use linux/bsd/os x terminal often, if you ever do, i highly recommend giving screen[3] or tmux a shot.

 _tmux_

the benefit to using the terminal means tmux lets you do a couple things:

\- split your terminal into multiple PTY's (panes) and windows, copy and paste between them. No GUI required \- "detach" the tmux sesssion, sending it (and any shells/applications running in the panes) to the background, and come back later to reattach \- it is also seamless to SSH into a server and work from there, since there's no GUI involved, you can use the same workflow on OS X, Linux or BSD machines.

I write in detail about tmux here: [http://tmuxp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about_tmux.html](http://tmuxp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about_tmux.html)

 _tmux configuration_

a good amount of developers use screen or tmux on a regular basis. over time, a variety of plugins have popped up. tmuxinator[4], teamocil[5] and tmuxp[6] (my own, written in python) being ways to load pre-configured sessions from a YAML file.

 _scripting / automating tmux with libtmux_

so here is where libtmux comes in, it can be used to control tmux via python objects, which can be very handy in situations where you want to interface with tmux at a low level expressively.

it is possible to script things via shell, but there's no way to know the state or easily traverse through the tree of Server -> Sessions -> Windows -> Panes.

tmuxp uses libtmux under the hood a way to build sessions[7]. other developers have used tmuxp[8]* for scripting tmux to the workflow of their projects.

* note: I link to `import tmuxp` because the API would formerly be in that project for the past few years. libtmux decouples the core into its own library.

[1] [https://tmux.github.io/](https://tmux.github.io/) [2] [http://libtmux.readthedocs.io/api.html](http://libtmux.readthedocs.io/api.html) [3] [https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/](https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/) [4] [https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator](https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator) [5] [https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil](https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil) [6] [https://github.com/tony/tmuxp](https://github.com/tony/tmuxp) [7] [https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/tmuxp/workspacebui...](https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/tmuxp/workspacebuilder.py) [8] [https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22import+tmuxp%2...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22import+tmuxp%22&type=Code&ref=searchresults)

<comment><AUTHOR> I use tmux a lot. I just don't understand why I would want to script tmux. I always thought it was supposed to be used interactively.

<comment> git-pull > I use tmux a lot. I just don't understand why I would want to script tmux.

That's why I held off on decoupling it. I was surprised by us having at least 10 or so people using tmuxp's API purely as a scripting library.

> I always thought it was supposed to be used interactively.

Scripting doesn't preclude interactive use. Teamocil, tmuxinator, tmuxp are all scripting under the hood. However, a yaml file only loads a session up, an API with fresh access to the latest details of a session, window, pane makes scripting _radically_ more easier than doing it through shell.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook goes under the knife - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/Facebook+goes+under+the+knife/2100-1032_3-6175099.html?tag=nefd.top <comment><USER2> Since when was Facebook a "dating site for college kids" - it's amazing to me how out of touch mainstream media can be with the web.</comment>


Swan logos and complete branding - <AUTHOR> http://polarvectors.com/swan-logos-contemporary-elegance-in-your-visual-identity/

<comment><USER2>
        What type of companies should use "Swan" as a logo mark?

Well before I even clicked the link my mind jumped straight away to House of Swan matches and their tobacco related products (papers, filters). In the UK (at least among smokers) they have a very strong brand recognition, so using the Swan here may not be the best idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... Since I am not from the UK, and not a smoker, I had no idea. I often think of Swarovski and luxury.</comment></comment>


Were There Really Arrow Storms? - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangehistory.net/2018/02/10/really-arrow-storms/ <comment><USER2> I recomment reading Bernard Cornwell's book Agincourt.

It has some very interesting (and gruesome) reconstructions of battles with English longbowmen - from the point-of-view of the longbowmen.

In the actual battle of Agincourt [1], ~5,000 archers and ~1,000 men-at-arms took on ~20-30,000 French infantry.

As the ~5,000 archers could fire ~12 arrows a minute, with 72-100 arrows each, the French would have had 360,000-500,000 arrows hit their lines during the battle - 10 to 20 for each Frenchman.

The article talks about the impossibility of shooting 10-12 arrows-per-minute, however it doesn't talk about how the English trained from childhood to fire a longbow - in fact, it was written into law for hundreds of years.

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

<comment><USER3> I can't really imagine it's impossible to shoot 10-12 arrows a minute.

I'm an amateur archer, with a preference for traditional, sightless recurve bows. At my entirely-amateur level, I can put an arrow in the target (though not the bulls eye) at 20 yards without pausing to aim - shooting by muscle memory - at a rate of 4-5 per minute.

It's pretty difficult for me to imagine someone with a lifetime of practice couldn't shoot at least twice as fast as I can, with my roughly one year of practice.

<comment><USER4> Note though that the draw weights of medieval bows were way higher than a modern sport recurve bow. Estimates vary but go as high as 150 pounds--so maybe 3x typical bows used today. I don't have an opinion on how quickly trained from childhood archers could fire at the time but there was a lot of force involved.

<comment><USER5> And you can see the distortions on the musculo-skeletal system that pulling those heavy bows over and over for years inflicted on longbowmen from their remains.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite- archers-drowned-aboard-Henry-VIIIs-flagship-9Mary-Rose-identified-RSI.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to take away from modern war, but Medieval times must have been really bad. I can't imagine being on the front line knowing I am probably about to be stabbed or hideously maimed at best. The march into a cloud of arrows which you can see coming in volleys would be absolutely miserable.

I find it really hard to picture myself in that type of conflict.

Yet, despite being no more clement, and that death is a constant, the idea of my D-Day craft opening up, and being raked with invisible machine gun fire is almost clinical in nature.

Airstrikes and missles are so far removed from medieval battles, it would be fair to say that you can sit in a destroyer with AC and comfortably press a button while thinking what happens at the end of your book tonight before bed. I can imagine that, but not the guilt one may feel if any.

What a difference distance makes.

<comment><USER7> Look up the Battle of Cannae, wherein Hannibal successfully encircled a force of approximately 80k Romans and killed approximately 70k of them. This wasn't bowmen vs infantry but, primarily, infantry vs infantry. The battle was effectively won once the encirclement was completed, but killing people in close quarter combat is an agonizingly slow process unless there's a rout. Encircled soldiers can't rout. The slaughter continued until darkness, and only after dark did the battle cease, leaving some survivors (night battles were exceedingly rare in antiquity).

Imagine being in the middle of an army that is being driven into a more and more compact mass of panicking humanity, knowing that you've lost and are doomed to die, but that death does not arrive for, possibly, the better part of a day! Livy reported of the Romans that, "Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared, made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves."

I'd take one good charge and death by a storm of arrows over _that_ any day.

<comment><USER8> I actually thought of the Battle of Cannae during the episode of Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards.

<comment><USER9> Sure. I'm sure you think of it during most medieval show that has some sort of warfare, some variation of it is almost always featured, though as far as I know tactics similar to that had been used long before that particular battle.

<comment><USER10> Encirclement Is very old tactics the medieval period actually used this and much more modern tactics effectively combined arms warfare.

<comment><USER11> Encirclement was just the outcome. What was really interesting to me in the battle of Cannae was the feigned retreat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think they did, but if they used Time on Target ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target)), they could have created a localized peak of incoming arrows per second that is significantly higher than the rate of fire.

I would guess that also would make it harder for defenders to dodge incoming arrows. Rationale: if you can see it, one incoming arrow is relatively easy to avoid, ten per square meter almost impossible. Also, the arrows would come in from different directions (the ones fired earliest almost vertically, the last ones fired almost horizontally), making it harder to see all arrows heading for you.

</comment><comment><USER13> TLDR: Yes

<comment><USER14> I was expecting - in this post-Randall Monroe world - a much more thorough accounting of the amount of sunlight blocked by 5000 in-flight arrows.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like a great candidate for a What If submission.

<comment><USER16> Here is my speculation: you cannot fit enough archers in the relatively small area from where they can still shoot at the same target and cover a significant portion of the sky with their arrows.

<comment><USER17> Unless the flight paths converge at the end.

<comment><USER18> When the arrow hits your face, you can no longer see the sun. Therefore one archer is sufficient to blot out the sun.

<comment><USER19> 2 arrows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _The real problem is when we move from 1000 archers with light bows, to 1000 > archers with heavy medieval bows..._

And ancient battles often had more than 1000 archers. Thermopylae probably had 5,000 professional archers. That's 25,000+ arrows in the sky, focused on one area. There's no question that it would block out the sun to some degree, but how much?

<comment><USER21> To the point of the article, having 5000 professional archers likely does NOT translate to 25,000 arrows in the air at once, but rather some number lower than 5,000.

<comment><USER22> Actually..per the article, hopefully the same one we all read, given the flight time of an arrow, there were likely at least 1 if not more than 1 arrow per archer, in the air at a single time. So at least 5000 but likely more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> a video on Agincourt [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5cIzwaxKcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5cIzwaxKcM) (ok, the first 2 minutes are a little hocky but he also does some great Roman videos) and one one archery for reference [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDQaJKpBWgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDQaJKpBWgY) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSq5GX0G3Co](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSq5GX0G3Co)

</comment><comment><USER24> The arrow storm is probably a myth created by war writers.</comment>


Ask HN: Authorized to work in the US - <AUTHOR> I wanted to know when companies say "Are you authorized to work in the US", do they mean if I will require future visa sponsorship?<p>I am authorized to work in the US, but I will require visa sponsorship. I am sure there are others who are confused about this. <comment><USER2> By default, only US citizens and Permanent Residents(green card) are authorized to work for any employer without any sponsorship. So when companies ask this, it means they want to know if you are one of the 2 or not. Anyone else requires a work authorization like an EAD or some form of work visa.

</comment><comment><USER3> Say yes if you are Citizen, Green Card holder, any other EAD (H4, pending I-485), a valid H1 or F1 OPT, you can say YES.

<comment><USER2> Be careful here. A Valid H1B does not mean "you are authorized to work in the United States". You are only authorized to work for that current employer. The new employer will have to file a new one (we call it transfer unofficially but it really a new application except that it doesn't count against quota etc like first time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you need sponsorship? Yes. That's what it means...</comment>


The 10.5-Inch iPad Pro's 120Hz Refresh Rate Matters - <AUTHOR> https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/120hz-refresh-rate/ <comment><USER2> I've been using a 10.5 inch iPad Pro for the past week and I can attest for the almost unnatural feel of responsiveness the new display technology affords. At first my brain could hardly make sense of it: animations were way too smooth, scrolling felt unreal — it all felt like a pre-rendered demo. Now I've become used to it every other display feels archaically sluggish by comparison.</comment>