How fixed-gear bikes can confuse Google's self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/08/26/how-fixed-gear-bikes-can-confuse-googles-self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER3> _While a human driver can easily see a rider doing a track stand isn't going anywhere_...

Ok, I'm just going to come out and say, I'm a licensed human driver and a bicyclist, and I find track stands _confusing_ too. Like a skateboarder in the bike lane, there's a lot of potential for unexpected motion, and that needs to be accounted for.

The bicyclist is wobbling in place, but could easily transition to going forward or backwards without warning. The bicyclist is intent on the stand, so drivers won't be able to gain eye contact.

I think the cloud of uncertainty around bicyclists is also why cars wrongly yield to my bike so often at stop signs. Some bicyclists do unpredictable things, and drivers incorporate that into their mental models.

People learn, and I'm confident that self-driving cars will too. Eventually.

<comment><USER4> Yes, when I'm at a stop sign anywhere near a bike, I'll yield if I'm in a car. Bicyclists are just too unpredictable - sometimes they'll roll the stop sign even if it seems unwise (or maybe they just didn't notice me). So now I just assume all bicyclists I see on the road will ignore all stop signs in their way; it sometimes leads to awkward wave/stops, but better that than running somebody over.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind that once you "wave" you assumer responsibility for any accident which might ensue do to your waving people on because others may not be aware of your waving and interrupting expected traffic patterns.

<comment><USER4> Yah, in general I hate wavers. The problem is that I've experienced bicyclists who just don't follow traffic rules regarding stop, yield, and red lights. Given that I know there's a nonzero probability that a bicycle will intersect with my car if I pull out, I don't go from my stop until I'm pretty sure they're going to stop at the 4-way.

As I mentioned in a cousin reply, I once struck a bicyclist who wasn't obeying traffic rules (she blew a stop sign at a 4-way) and was found liable for the accident at least by the officer who wrote the accident report. We're all lucky her injuries weren't major, but there's _no way_ I'm going to risk hitting a biker who is barreling down a hill toward a 4-way by assuming they're going to follow the traffic laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I truly believe that general purpose self driving cars are much farther away than the latest press releases would suggest. Apparently they don't work well at night, in the rain, when the road lines aren't perfect, etc[1]. They basically only work in the perfect weather and roads of Mountain View during the day.

In Boston, the roads are shit, the drivers are crazy (including me), and everything is permanently under construction. Once people learn how to spot these cars, very quickly the tricks to passing them are going to be learned. Not to mention the jokers using laser pointers and whatnot to mess with them. If you think this won't happen, you are sorely naive.

I think self driving cars will work for specialized cases, like long haul trucking on highways, but for the commuter, it's going to be a long ways off.

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving- car-...](http://gizmodo.com/6-simple-things-googles-self-driving-car-still- cant-han-1628040470)

<comment><USER7> The first time an airplane flew it only went 120 feet (37 m).

11 years later the world had it's first regularly-scheduled commercial airline. [2]

A lot can happen in 10 years.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Flights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Flights)

[2] [http://www.space.com/16657-worlds-first-commercial- airline-t...](http://www.space.com/16657-worlds-first-commercial-airline-the- greatest-moments-in-flight.html)

<comment><USER8> I think it's more amazing we went from 0.02 miles one way, to 477800 round trip to the moon in just 66 years.

I vaguely recall the google director saying their autonomous cars already drive better than his parents.

Even if it's only daytime clear weather driving, super cruise control would be insanely useful for commuters, truck drivers, and city busses.

It's easy to fall into the trap of perfect or nothing. Even partial solutions create a lot of value. Complete autonomous driving will be here real soon, but there might be a few intermediate steps along the way.

<comment><USER9> > super cruise control would be insanely useful for commuters, truck drivers, > and city busses.

There's something that does exactly that, is cheaper and safer: It's called rail.

<comment><USER8> And people often use that, the NYC subway is a great example. But it's not so effective in lower density, or less established rail systems. You'll often see east/west travel relatively accessible, but north/south hard, for example. Rail only really serves those along the line. I'm sure phoenix could build a ring and spoke system to connect up all of those low density developments.

The thing that sucks though, it's a big upfront cost. super cruise control is an incremental cost that takes advantage of existing infrastructure.

Rail isn't so great at getting food to grocery stores. (cities, sure, but not actual transportation endpoints.) Such a system could be built, but trucks are so obviously effective, and they work with the existing infrastructure.

Rail is cool but a big upfront cost for something that's not obviously superior to the current system seems wasteful.

Maybe fill train stations with self driving taxis to cover those last few miles to home, or work, or wherever.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the thing is just that the interstate system was in the end more expensive than similar rail infrastructure would have been (especially in maintenance).

And, well, yes, cars and trucks will still be necessary, but not nearly in the same amount.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to believe this quote, but light rail per mile is an order of magnitude more expensive than highway per mile. Do you have any citations I can look into?

Thanks.

<comment><USER8> I can't find anything more formal with a quick search, but this is pretty plausible [http://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs- roads-...](http://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs-roads-for- value-utilization-emissions-savings-difference-like-night-and-day/)

$35million/mile for rail, $25million/mile for a single lane. Rail maintenance is cheaper, and ongoing costs are generally lower - you don't need police patrolling railroads.

Railroads are cool, and they have a lot of advantages, but we've got this huge investment in our existing system. And unfortunately, unlike self driving cars, there isn't a smooth transition. It's like switching from pc to mac, but all of your software is home made, and must be rewritten. You have a huge upfront investment to just get started, and you have to maintain the other system as well.

<comment><USER11> The two key advantages of road over rail:

\- much shorter stopping distances. This lets roads be "general access" in a way that rails have never been, even if you were to have a railway running past your house.

\- much smaller minimum turn radius

\- ability to drive around obstacles

<comment><USER9> The situations where roads are better:

\- low amounts of people (or goods) \- going into different directions \- coming from different places

The situations where rails are better:

\- high amounts of people (or goods) \- going into the same general direction \- coming from the same general area

Which is why roads are damn useful in rural cases, but if you think about building a 23-lane highway, maybe rail might be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please Google Engineers: If your car knows where bicyclists are anyways, can you please have an additional safety to stop people from opening the driver- side door, even in a parked car, if a bicyclist is actively passing the car?

That is probably the biggest danger to me as a bicyclist in the city: People opening doors on parked cars for me to slam into (and potentially throwing me into a lane of car traffic) Your cars could easily outperform most humans in preventing this dangerous situation.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I definitely want a car that locks me inside if it thinks some moron is passing too close to my door.

<comment><USER14> I hate cyclists and driver online arguments bbbuuuttt... You probably also hate when a cyclist is riding in the middle of the road to avoid car doors and which makes you unable to pass him.

<comment><USER13> Cyclists should ride near the middle of the lane and be treated as taking up the whole lane. I'm not gonna try to squeak by somebody within a single lane just because he's riding toward the right side of the lane.,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "The odd thing is," wrote the cyclist, "I felt safer dealing with a self- > driving car than a human-operated one."

In the not so far future this will be a concept impossible to explain to kids. That we all used to drive around these multi-thousand pound machines and rely on the expertise of often distracted strangers to not be maimed or killed (and dying by the millions by the way)... It already is starting to sound ridiculous. The thought of no machine in control will be terrifying before long.

<comment><USER16> > In the not so far future this will be a concept impossible to explain to > kids.

That people used to operate vehicles themselves? I don't see why this is a concept hard grasp for kids.

<comment><USER17> In the not so far past, there were people employed to operate an elevator. (Elevator operators still exist, but then again, so do steam trains - <USER2> are in widespread use.)

As a kid, this was hard for me to grasp. "Why did they hire someone to push a button?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How should the car have responded to the cyclist? In ambiguous stops like this I find non-verbal social cues like nods, facial expressions, and hand waves are the only way to break the impasse.

<comment><USER19> Potentially the car could flash the headlights, a signal that's commonly used today to say, "I am waiting for you to go".

<comment><USER20> Not everwhere. The other meaning for flashing headlights is "get out of my way, I'm coming through"

<comment><USER21> This reminds me of the driving I saw when I traveled to India many years ago. On relatively-major "two-lane" roads, trash and draft-animal traffic would force trucks to drive basically in the center of the road. When two trucks met, they would each swerve slightly to the right so as to barely avoid crashing. _Before_ they met, however, they would each turn on their _left_ signal light. Our driver said it was supposed to intimidate oncoming traffic into leaving more room.

<comment><USER22> In India they drive on the left, did you get your sides switched?

<comment><USER21> Haha yes I must have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _If self-driving vehicles almost never crash, roads will become immensely > more safe and inviting to cyclists._

Not unless the more aggressive cyclists also start following the rules of the road as they pertain to bicycles. I can't count the times I've seen near accidents caused by cyclists who make abrupt, last-second dashes into oncoming traffic because they feel they have 100% of the right-of-way 100% of the time. And I say that as a bicyclist myself.

<comment><USER24> As a driver who recently had a jackass cyclist cut across opposing traffic across Mass Ave in Central Square in front of me, I'd rather have the self- driving car I'll soon be robot chauffeured in stand on the brakes than hit the cyclist, had he been more of a jackass than he was. People inconvenienced for a few seconds by cyclists need to get over themselves and probably have the wrong attitude to have a driver's license.

<comment><USER25> "Inconvenienced" is not the right word. "Frightened witless" is more apropos.

Example: The cyclist cuts in front of me, violating traffic laws, and I hit him and he's injured or killed. Not only does this affect me emotionally, but suddenly I'm in the liability hotseat unless I can prove the cyclist was in the wrong. After all, I'm in a one ton car and he's on a 30lb bike. It is this situation that I'm hoping to avoid, and if a cyclist nearly causes it, I'm pissed.

Unless it'd been another car. Then the damage to the other vehicle is pretty obvious and, since we're on city streets, neither driver is injured.

<comment><USER21> The impression I get from the media and from cycling advocates is that auto drivers are very rarely ticketed for killing or injuring cyclists. But please, ignore that fact and continue to drive so as not to kill and injure cyclists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how they're going to handle event traffic. Football games, concerts and other events where the traffic is being heavily managed by traffic officers on the street. You're supposed to obey the traffic officer and ignore traffic lights, stop signs and even road directionality. If they direct you to go the wrong way down a one-way street, that's what you do because it is special event traffic.

Will the self-driving cars be able to handle this?

<comment><USER27> Perhaps Google will open up an API for authorities to override map information for temporary events.

<comment><USER28> I think that solution would be far worse. Could you imagine if it got hacked? Some hacker sends all self-driving cars the wrong way down some one-way street.

<comment><USER9> And even if the Google side doesn't get hacked – as we've seen before, the government side will contract this out to the lowest bidder, who'll hire some guy in china to do it and give him full root access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hate to nitpick, but... the title is misleading. The effect of doing a track stand causes the self-driving car to be confused. Not the fact that the bike has a fixed-gear. I have a free-wheel single gear bike that I can do track stands on...

<comment><USER30> I guess you could do one stopped uphill, but with a free wheel, you're just balancing. There is no way to pedal the bike in reverse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm commuting by bike and on my route in Mountain View I see quite many Google cars. They are very conservative and so far I haven't seen one that acted based on my arm turn signals. Either they don't recognize them, or they don't trust me ;) Overall I feel much more secure biking around autonomous Google cars than human drivers. Just the number of people doing red light violations is incredible here in the SV.

</comment><comment><USER32> > _We repeated this little dance for about two full minutes and the car never > made it past the middle of the intersection. The two guys inside were > laughing and punching stuff into a laptop._

That's what I would call to have a great job.

</comment><comment><USER33> Lol. This reminds me of communizing on my motorcycle in the rain (vfr800). Whenever I lay flat on the tank to avoid the rain a bit every human-driven car thought I was about to rocket past them. I wonder if a similar thing could happen with a motocycle. Someone on a sportbike can strike a much more speed- like pose than someone on a bicycle. Perhaps a motocycle looking like it was speeding into the intersection could convince the robot to panic break?

</comment><comment><USER34> Can someone explain what a "track stand" is?

<comment><USER35> There's a YouTube video linked in the article. Basically, stand off the seat, and balance while stationary by rocking forwards and backwards. Possible on a fixed gear bike because pedaling backwards moves the wheel backwards.

<comment><USER36> Also possible on a "normal" freewheeled bicycle. Just takes a bit of an incline and a bit more body english. Not super useful, but a neat trick, and good balance exercise.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeaB3G79vI)

<comment><USER37> Indeed. I can't do it -- well, I've never really tried -- but I saw a guy doing it this morning. His bike definitely had derailleurs. (Though hmm -- I suppose I don't know for an absolute fact that it had a freewheel. But I've never heard of a rear cluster without a freewheel.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Track stands are "almost moving" by design - every rock is supposed to be nearly the explosion that leaps you ahead of the other guy for victory, fortune and glory. It's a bit like a sprinter's crouch - and as a driver, if I saw a sprinter's crouch by the roadside, I'd be cautious and confused.

Good to see the car handled it safely.

</comment><comment><USER39> Interesting. I didn't know the term "track stand" existed, but, yeah, as a cyclist myself, I know a human driver would have flipped me off after a few seconds and plowed through the intersection.

</comment><comment><USER40> _" But the track stand, which are generally done only by riders on fixed-gear bikes, quickly became a problem."_

Track stand on reg bike no problem. So that's a problem.

</comment><comment><USER41> This obviously has nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with detecting and reacting to movement. I think the lede is buried here.

</comment><comment><USER24> Closed. Not a bug.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Gartner placed autonomous vehicles at the peak of inflated expectations"

Sounds about right. I think that we all want to see self driving cars, but I don't think were ready for software with morality. If I'm driving a car filled with kids and I'm faced with the choice of running over the old lady or driving the kids off the cliff I'm pretty confident in what choice I'm going to make. Is that the choice everyone would make? is that the choice the programer made? do I have a morality switch in the car? will it make value judgements about the occupants and the external world when forced to make a bad call?

Its going to be interesting times if these things end up on the road.

<comment><USER33> Maybe autodrive cars, but I certainly do not want to see driverless cars. I want meat onboard. Licensed meat. Someone to get the tickets. Someone to sue when the robot does something stupid. Someone with a foot on the hydraulic braking system and mechanical steering for when the electrics fail.

<comment><USER43> Where is the meat operating Predator/Reaper/Global Hawk drones? Thousands of miles away in an air-conditioned cargo container in the outskirts of Las Vegas.

<comment><USER42> Ok is there a difference between "writing software for global hawk" and "writing software for self driving cars"

As humans killing others is something we do, and based on history were pretty good at. We have the ability to justify our actions in some fairly ugly ways. There is a great quote from fog of war (check it out if you haven't seen it) on the firebombing of japan in WWII

"LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"

So thats war, thats folks who build the engines of war, and send folks out to die and kill. I would say that in writing a missile guidance system, your writing it as "fit for purpose" and should KNOW and COMPREHEND what is going to happen when it is used.

Is that going to be the same mind set for someone building a self driving car? Would I, or you, feel any better knowing that I had saved lives in 'theory' or 'statistically' only to know that I had caused actual death with my programing? I don't know how I would feel, I'm somewhat thankful that I'm not facing that dilemma in my current job.

<comment><USER43> I think you missed my point. Ignore for the moment what drones are used for (a pilot still makes the final decision to deploy ordinance).

My point was, software has advanced far enough for unmanned vehicles can fly on their own and navigate without human intervention. The X47-B (the Navy's "Salty Dog" UAV) can take off from an aircraft carrier, navigate to waypoints, refuel on-air from a tanker, and land _back on an aircraft carrier deck in the ocean_ without any human intervention.

Its not a stretch to think that self-driving cars are of similar complexity, and the problems around them will be solved in due time as well. There is no reason to have "meat" in the driver's seat anymore.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B)

<comment><USER42> A drone isn't the same thing as a car with a person in it.

Look at the problem tree for the drone, if it comes to a decision between crashing into the big expensive carrier or dumping it self in the sea, whats it going to choose? You can base this decision on dollars only and still make the right call.

The self driving car is going to face a genuine ethical dilemma at some point (or its coding will have to deal with one, as it isn't "self aware"). For the sake of simplicity lets make that "occupant or pedestrian". Are the lives of equal value? How does it choose? Am I allowed to influence that choice as the "passenger" in the car? By getting in the car do I have to agree to some TOS that says the car will sacrifice me to save someone else when it is unavoidable?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OS X 10.9.3 Is Toxic - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-toxic.html <comment><USER2> In an attempt to balance the discussion, I'm on 10.9.3 and I've had absolutely zero issues so far.

<comment><USER3> MBPR 2014. Had a few issues (crashing, slow wake/boot, etc.) with 10.9 + 10.9.1, but most of these problems were resolved by 10.9.2. Haven't had a crash with 10.9.3 as of yet.

What I also realized was constantly upgrading from one version to another kept around some legacy files that messed up my OS a bit. A clean install might do the trick for those having issues.

<comment><USER4> That's the kind of advice that I constantly see in the Apple community boards for all kinds of issues.

Why is such a solution even acceptable? I had no issues before 10.9.3, but if I have to go through a clean install just to fix the issues, there's no way that Apple is going to keep me as their customer.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, "reinstall Windows" is oft-quoted as the best solution to a lot of Windows problems too.

<comment><USER4> That's true, but I paid ~3000 Euros for my Macbook (thats 4000 Dollars) and that's exactly why this isn't acceptable to me.

<comment><USER6> That argument makes no sense. It's a fundamental fact that technology isn't perfect and sometimes you need to fix things - regardless of the cost of the device...

And you would rather that your $4000 machine kept crashing rather then spending 30 minutes doing something that could fix it?

<comment><USER4> The problem is that this involves more than 30 minutes of my time. Setting up my development environment after the clean install will take half a day and I'm sure that I will forget to configure something in the process which will cost me even more time when I need the tool working.

I switched from Lenovo (which just worked without any problems) to Mac because I thought it's the same quality (it'll just work) with the bonus of allowing me to develop for iOS.

As it turns out, superficial things like the look and feel is better on the Mac, but it's nowhere near in terms of stability. I used my Lenovo for 3 years in work and at home as my only machine, whereas the Mac is in use for 1 day per week and I've already had more crashes on the Mac than I ever had on my old Lenovo.

I just don't have the time or the interest to babysit my laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One kernel panic bug, and the system is "toxic" and "disease"? I'm not saying that this issue is acceptable, but I don't think those adjectives are really appropriate in describing it.

<comment><USER8> What's the Internet for if not hyperbole and over generalization?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been a Mac user for 6 months (MBP), I hardly tax the machine but it has crashed a dozen times. Twice today, and five times this week in total.

Not since Windows 98 have I seen such an unstable OS. I've seen less BSOD in the last 15 years than I've seen kernel panics in the last week.

<comment><USER10> In my experience, people who've had exorbitant numbers of kernel panics on Macs have had tons of things installed that muck around with MacOS X internals. VirtualBox, old SIMBL hacks, manual fan controls, etc. Those are all notoriously unstable and can cause lots of kernel panics.

<comment><USER11> >VirtualBox . . . notoriously unstable

Is there virtualization software that is not unstable on OS X?

<comment><USER12> I've only had one kernel panic clearly linked to Parallels, but I still haven't made it to a month of uptime after over two years of using OS X, so it's quite possible that's it's causing non-obvious problems even with no VMs running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Notably absent from the article, but spelled out in the comments, is that the author doesn't have an AppleID because he doesn't want to agree to Apple's terms, and therefore cannot acquire a kernel debug kit.

<comment><USER14> You're misquoting the author. He said that he doesn't have the time now to read through all the T&Cs.

<comment><USER15> this doesn't make it sound any better unfortunately. perhaps i might be unpopular in saying this, but he should just click the fuck through. either you want to spend your time getting stuff done, or spend your time prevaricating about the bush.

<comment><USER16> Well, there's more to the story about the T&Cs, which I didn't get into because I was trying to write about panics... So I did try to create an Apple ID, which required I agree to "Apple Terms of Service", which links to [http://www.apple.com/legal/](http://www.apple.com/legal/). Ok, WHERE are the "Apple Terms of Service" on that page? Perhaps I'm being an idiot, but I don't see anything with that title. I browsed around for a while before giving up for now -- I've already lost time due to the panics, I'll get back to creating an account some other day.

<comment><USER17> Under the heading "Internet Services"

<comment><USER16> Ok, but which one? All of them? ... The tickbox says I'm agreeing to the "Apple Terms of Service" ... which means?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some people have felt that switching graphics modes is the source of Mavericks crashes. I had five crashes in several days last week. I went to the Energy Saver control panel, and turned off Automated Graphics Switching. Haven't had a crash in a week. Could easily be coincidence, but I thought I'd mention it here in case anyone else wants to try it. I'd be very interested in hearing whether it helps.

By the way, what happens on my machine is that the UI completely freezes. I'm not sure if that's what other commenters experience when they talk about "crashing".

<comment><USER19> I'm on 10.9.3 and do not see an "Automated Graphics Switching" option anywhere on the Energy Saver control panel... has this been renamed or removed?

<comment><USER20> Do you have a discrete GPU? Very few Mac portables have one anymore - obviously, the option doesn't apply if you have only CPU-integrated graphics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've experienced a lot of crashes since 10.9.3 on a late 2013 rMBP, mostly when sleeping/waking the device. Also, my WiFi is randomly disconnecting all the time since the update.

Before the update I never had any issues.

I love the hardware and the OS a lot, but I never had any crashes with my ugly Lenovo, so I'm currently thinking about switching back to Lenovo

<comment><USER21> > Also, my WiFi is randomly disconnecting all the time since the update.

I don't get the WiFi disconnects, but 10.9.3 has stopped being able to automatically connect to WiFi.

Wake up Macbook from sleep and find WiFi disconnected. Click icon, see only a couple of SSIDs, click the one I want, get the "unable to connect dialog". Click icon again and wait for refresh; now see a much longer list of SSIDs. Click the same one that it couldn't connect to before and it finally connects.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly how my currently Macbook behaves. I could write a short script to turn off/on the WiFi after login, but it's really annoying that you have to do that for such an expensive device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've had only one kernel panic so far on my late 2013 rMBP 13. At least that's what I found in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, and I've been through the 10.9.3 betas as well.

On the other hand I experienced random WiFi problems upon wakeup, had to do a couple of hard-reboots, suffered the rainbow static problem and other miscellaneous problems with external displays. Lately I've been experiencing some weird issues with the sound system: I hear music in my headphones but some notification sounds are sent to the speakers.

As a first-time Mac user (after a decade with Linux) I must say this is quite a frustrating and "meh" experience.

Love the screen and the battery life though.

Glad to hear I'm not alone, my colleagues rolls eyes when I rant about the problems I'm having.

Side Note: It seems to me that the most problematic models are Retina MacBook Pros.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm really surprised by all of the reports of crashing. I've had 3 different Macs over the last 7 years and I've had just one crash in all that time. I use my Mac anywhere from 8-16 hours per day and tax it pretty well. Before that I couldn't stay away from the BSOD on Windows, one of the reasons I finally made the switch.

<comment><USER23> Why am I getting down-voted for this?

<comment><USER24> The only reason I ever get bsods since windows xp is hardware problems. hence if you see bsod check out your box, do not blame windows. moreover, kernel panics on linux boxes are also most of the times hardware bound or you've broken something yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My external display just started going to rainbow static and back over and over again. Didn't think to blame the update till now. Also just had my first kernel panic in about a year.

<comment><USER26> I've seen that happen with Macbooks for years (the rainbow static), with both my mid 2012 retina MBP and the pre-retina one it replaced. Happens occasionally with my Dell monitor at home, and would happen with one of those knockoff IPS' that I used at my previous job pretty frequently. Unplugging and replugging the monitor will eventually fix it, but yeah, it's obnoxious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Experience a lot of crashes on my Macbook pro retina which is the latest model. Screen gets artifacts everytime the gpu swtiches from nvidia to iris pro or back. Coupled with the crashes that I now see on my Ipad air, I cant help get the feeling that things are starting to bitrot at Apple.

<comment><USER28> Anything with an A7 is a bit more understandable due to moving to 64 bit. 7.1 is already significantly better than 7.0 for 64 bit stability.

<comment><USER27> Safari crashes on a fairly frquent basis (> 10 times a day) even with the latest updates.

<comment><USER28> That's crazy. Is there a certain site that causes it more than others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been dealing with Apple for months trying to get them to fix Mail in OS X Mavericks 10.9.2, which crashes on me about every 30 minutes, or sometimes more frequently. Their answer, which they refuse to put in writing, is that engineering is "aware of the problem."

Also, Mavericks broke Samba support completely. Apparently 10.9.3 doesn't fix it.

[http://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/mavericks- broke-s...](http://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/mavericks-broke-smb/)

I agree with the comments about this being the least stable Mac OS ever. I'd put it up there with Windows ME. Multiple times per day I have to interrupt what I'm doing to deal with Apple-related bugs.

<comment><USER6> Strange, I use Samba every day at work, have had absolutely zero issues with it - this is across all versions of Mavericks, and previous versions of Mac OS...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just checked my logs... not a single panic since 10.9.3

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting to hear people are having such problems. I'm on 10.9.3 and haven't had any crashes. Sometimes my cursor disappears for a few seconds or on top of certain windows, but nothing major.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm _seriously_ unimpressed with 10.9 in general.

I bought a new MBP a few weeks back, and the hardware is awesome... the retina screen, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD make it a joy to use.

But...

* I enabled Bluetooth, plugged in my Magic Mouse, and the next time it woke from sleep wireless connectivity had disappeared and has only come back sporadically since

* the machine occasionally 'loses' USB drives, complaining that I didn't eject them properly when they're still connected

* plugging in my Nexus phone via USB, or an HDMI cable, sometimes causes the keyboard to freeze, needing a hard reboot.

Rebooting twice within an hour isn't welcome when you're giving a lecture and have already met the student who loudly proclaims that Apple hardware is overpriced crap.

I do wonder whether Apple actually _test_ new releases of their OS, or just leave it to us to do it for them.

And don't get me started about the usefulness of the "Genuis" Bar at my local Apple store...

I am wondering whether a downgrade to Mountain Lion may fix a few problems.

<comment><USER33> This honestly sounds like hardware failure. Bluetooth is very stable for me with a Magic Mouse.

Your USB and HDMI issues seem related. I'd wager a power issue.

Make the problem reproducible and they'll swap it over at the Genius Bar, who are extremely helpful if you're polite to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Random useless data point - my colleague on 10.9.3 plugged in a projector yesterday and had a kernel panic shortly thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've had many, many crashes on 10.9.1-2 with my Mini.

Started when I connected my 22'' Dell over DP instead of HDMI with Apple- supplied DVI adapter, and added a second display – an Apple Cinema 20'' flipped to the side, to use it in vertical orientation.

I didn't wait for 10.9.3 to put that away. I just couldn't stand the way it would blank out the screens with a random color somewhere off my desktop; and hang – several times a day at times. Might have something to do with how crap our power line is (I've seen ceiling lights changing intensity throughout the day when this was happening).

Would be fun to check now with 10.9.3, my past experience tells me that the most whined about builds of OS X have worked out to be the most stable for me personally.

</comment><comment><USER36> Most people here seem to refer to (r)MBPs only. I have a 2013 Fall MBA (a replacement I got for the failing SSD 2012 MBA) and the frequency of hardlock failures has been going up (currently once a day).

It also tends to happen a lot during web browsing more than anything else, I don't have any VMs, any external monitors, or any fucking-with-kernel things.

Ironically, it's been only 2 years since I started using OSX from Windows and Linux, and basically the amount my computers crashed hasn't changed a bit. I wondered why Apply fanboys kept raving about how crash-free their life was, since I wasn't seeing it.

I guess this is just what happens when an OS evolves to become an open enough platform for a lot of software to run on it, it just gets less stable.

</comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone else had trouble with external thunderbolt<->dual dvi adapters in the 10.9.x series? I have a Mac at home that crashes the windowserver every time my external Monoprice IPS monitor is plugged in. It doesn't happen on a newer Retina mac at all.

<comment><USER38> At least you know the adapter is working if it crashes your computer. I am lucky to get the adapter to work properly and when it does, plugging in my Shimian crashes my MBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For what it's worth, my late 2011 MBA hasn't crashed once since I installed Mavericks. This article, though interesting, well research and well written is anecdata. Interesting anecdata, but anecdata non-the-less.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm seeing a lot of good reports for people with MBAs, and a lot of bad reports for people with MBPs. I think I can tell which ones the Apple devs use themselves.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've had issues with freezes for a while pre 10.9.3 too. These obviously don't generate panic files so are more of a pain to try to debug.

Also I recently installed refind ([http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/](http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/)) to dual-boot linux and have experienced a lot of issues as a result of that (separate to the aforementioned freezing issues.)

At least this guy has actual kernel panics :)

</comment><comment><USER42> My late 2013 MBP 15 (16GB 1TB 2.6) randomly freezes 2-3 times per week, sometimes more. It seems to happen more frequently when under CPU load, but not exclusively. The mouse freezes, the fan slowly spins down, and it requires a hard reset.

I have two 1920x1080 external monitors (hdmi and thunderbolt) which seems to be a commonly reported configuration with crashes.

It came with Mavericks and has done this ever since I got it, under all versions of Mavericks

</comment><comment><USER43> No kernel panics here, but I get weird behaviour with external displays.

Sometimes when I hook up my external displays, some of the icons on one of the menu bars will disappear. It's very strange. I can fix it by going into the display settings and changing which one is primary.

I've got a recent rMBP with 2 x 1920x1200 monitors attached, one via a MiniDP -> DVI adapter, the other via as MiniDP -> Dual Link DVI adapter.

</comment><comment><USER44> If we're going to collect anecdotes then I'll note my 2013 MBP has been running continually for over a year without a panic. I have a 2006 MB and 2008 MB (both still running) each having panicked 2-3 times over their lifetime. I'm a developer, my son is a musician and my wife is a graphics design artist so there's been lots of software thrown at these machines.

<comment><USER45> And here's mine: My first Mac was the G3, I'm now on a 2013 11" Macbook Air (10.9.2) and I have never experienced a kernel panic ever, I couldn't tell you what a kernel panic looks like. The only time I ever have an issue is if I try waking my computer immediately after entering sleep when attached to an external display – it doesn't happen and inevitably requires a restart.

        Current uptime: 23:05  up 3 days,  8:36, 2 users, load averages: 1.67 1.56 1.67

I have never experienced unreliability, and it's a pleasure to use and carry. I tried Ubuntu on a HP Laptop I had around, and I didn't like it one bit, it felt slow and the UI felt clunky. Even when using SSH to access the machine it took around 5-6 seconds for the bash prompt to appear, compared to an almost instantaneous Debian prompt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I got a couple of kernel panics on upgrading to 10.9.3 but then Nvidia released new drivers for it and i haven't had a single kernel panic since switching to them.

Although - one port on the graphicscard won't wake up if a connected screen goes to sleep. Nvidia had that problem on the first released 10.9.2 driver, but fixed it about a day later.

Could you try checking if the Nvidia supplied drivers helps?

</comment><comment><USER47> I've had no kernel panics on 10.9.3 ... but this Haswell rMBP 13" periodically froze after password entry when screen locked. And froze so badly that switching user was no way out: I had to hard-reboot. Since disabling the screen lock on inactivity it's been okay, but that's not a terribly secure or reassuring solution.

</comment><comment><USER48> The only weird problems I've had on 10.9 at all have been with the WindowServer locking up when coming back from sleep or lock. This is on a late 2013 MacBook Pro.

After a ton of messing around and talking to Apple Support, we found that trashing the WindowServer plists that are stored in multiple locations seemed to sort it out… so far

</comment><comment><USER6> Weird. Fr me, I can't remember my MacBook Pro hasn't having a kernel panic in the last six months, and at one was one of the only ones I've ever had. I recall that it was something to do with a VirtualBox kernel module or something, so I upgraded VirtualBox and have had no problems since.

</comment><comment><USER49> My 2008 Mac Pro has been rock stable since 10.9.2 (before that, just the 'mail, are you drunk?' issues).

Sounds a lot like the problem is graphics switching - everyone with issues here has two graphics adapters.

</comment><comment><USER50> MBP 15 inch (mid 2012) gets ultra hot. I have never seen a laptop become this hot. It also has various problems getting back from sleep and low battery. So very annoying.

Sadly, I am sort of forced to use it everyday.

<comment><USER38> I have a late 2013 15 inch MBP that regularly reaches 100 degrees C when running Adobe Flash. The only other time the machine has exceeded 70 is when I tried running Steam games at 2880x1800.

The hardware simply shouldn't get that hot, no matter how poorly optimized the software might be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've had terrible issues with my rMBP 13" (freezing, kernel panics) until, 1 year after I bought this machine, the SSD finally went out. Got it replaced and no issues so far.

</comment><comment><USER52> Older OSX updates have done the same thing to my similarly older Macs. I wish Apple would be more diligent with their testing - especially when it comes to video.

</comment><comment><USER53> 10.9.3 has been nothing but absolutely stable for me, and I do a ton of development tools installed and do loads of tweaking and customization.

</comment><comment><USER54> i'm sure that the stock Apple support answer would be to backup, reformat and restore.

This would probably have fixed his problem since the backtrace he finally Obtained fingered the file system, which is probably corrupt. (not that this excuses the panic!)

This is further evidenced by his "helpdesk" being unable to repair his computer by physically swapping drives.

<comment><USER16> Yes, this is a good theory, and consistent with the decoded stack trace we have. Although, consider that three other coworkers are suffering the same panics after upgrading to 10.9.3. Have we all got the same corruption? I suppose that could be possible, if the corruption was caused by the same bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have the OS X 10.9.3 on a Macbook Pro , Mid 2009 and there is absolutely no problem with it. Is it on newer macs?

</comment><comment><USER56> not just 10.9.3, entire 10.9.x is the crappiest OSX of all times ! So many stability issues.

</comment><comment><USER57> Well, the 10.9.x Finder is super buggy since the start, perhaps 10.9.3 just made it worse.

</comment><comment><USER58> No problems over here at all.

</comment><comment><USER59> We are having problems, when using multiple displays connected to the iMac.

</comment><comment><USER60> Disabling hibernate and fighting with power napping has solved most of my crashing problems. I think 10.9 is a mess when it comes to trying to save me power.

I also still disable noatime, journaling, swap space, and sudden motion sensors on any computer with an SSD; even if its unnecessary.

<comment><USER61> If you disabled journaling and swap on your machine, you're quite far on the way to data loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Lots of crashes here too. In the graphics driver.

</comment><comment><USER63> "It happens to me therefore it is toxic!!!!!!"

<comment><USER64> Anything that fucks up your workflow is toxic ( _very bad, unpleasant, or harmful_ ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I use both thunderbolt and my HDMI out on my rMBP daily.

This guy is a bafoon complaining about being unable to fix a problem by not accepting T&C, but he's using OS X?

I'm not denying his problem, but he is certainly cause for it being a lot worse for him than it really is.

</comment><comment><USER66> Aren't bugs in pre-release software expected? He makes it sound like there are tons of issues, when it looks like this is just same one bug related to external display handling.

<comment><USER67> This isn't prerelease software. This is the current version of the OS that Apple will prompt you to upgrade to automatically.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some good books about the founding of companies? - <AUTHOR> I recently read both Creativity Inc and Masters of Doom, and I loved reading about the founders, the challenges they faced, and the ingenuity they used to get through them. Does anyone know any other good books that are similar to these? <comment><USER2> "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston is fantastic.

She interviews the founders of companies such as PayPal, Yahoo!, TripAdvisor, Fog Creek Software and many others. The book focuses on the very beginnings of these companies and shows with how little they started and what challenges they faced. Highly recommended.</comment>


Critical security vulnerability in GNU Libc - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2015-0235

<comment><USER2> "Red Hat would like to thank Qualys for reporting this issue."

Meanwhile, there are no official packages yet, so we RHEL/CentOS users can't upgrade.

<comment><USER3> RHEL have now released updates.

Also, not this was leaked before the end of the embargo.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Patches are coming, apparently the vuln was to be announced at 7PM CET, but the French Qualys RP violated the embargo on a mailing list 3 hours too early.

Debian packages are already out for Wheezie. Waiting for Squeeze.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss- security/2015/01/27/9](http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss- security/2015/01/27/9)

Note the long list of mitigations. Some things will be remotely exploitable (exim), but it looks like most things will be safe enough, as it doesn't affect cases where forward confirmed reverse DNS. Even the exploit they give only works against particular exim configs.

That said, this has a picture, and a name. So it's obviously the biggest deal ever.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this becoming a new thing on Linux? Patch Tuesdays?

</comment><comment><USER5> I retired as a C language lawyer a long time ago, and mostly work in scripting languages nowadays, so am out of date on what is considered accepted styles and idioms, but something does not look right about the patch.

Consider this section of the patch:

        diff --git a/nss/digits_dots.c b/nss/digits_dots.c
        index 2b86295..e007ef4 100644 (file)
        --- a/nss/digits_dots.c
        +++ b/nss/digits_dots.c
        @@ -46,7 +46,10 @@ __nss_hostname_digits_dots (const char *name, struct hostent *resbuf,
             {
               if (h_errnop)
                *h_errnop = NETDB_INTERNAL;
        -      *result = NULL;
        +      if (buffer_size == NULL)
        +       *status = NSS_STATUS_TRYAGAIN;
        +      else
        +       *result = NULL;
               return -1;
             }

Is the comparison of buffer_size to NULL (1) legal, and (2) stylistically OK?

My recollection is that NULL can be defined as 0 or as ((void * )0).

On implementations where NULL is defined to be 0, comparing an integer to NULL should give the desired result. On implementations where NULL is ((void * )0), and where the null pointer is all 0 bits, I'd expect it to work, too.

But what about on architectures where the null pointer is not all 0 bits? Then ((void * )0) should be the bit pattern of that architecture's null pointer, and what happens when that is compared to the buffer_size integer? In particular, what happens when buffer_size is 0?

If NULL is converted to an integer, won't it end up with the integer with the same bit pattern as the null pointer, and so will != buffer_size? If buffer_size is converted to a pointer, on the other hand, it will be converted to the pointer whose bits are all 0 (the magic that replaces 0 with the null pointer only applies to the constant 0, not to variables that happen to contain 0), and so will != NULL.

Thus, it seems that this comparison only works right on systems where NULL is defined as 0, or where the null pointer is all 0 bits.

If NULL is 0 in gcc, which I believe is the intended compiler for libc, then it should work everywhere, but it still seems like a bad idea, because it means that if gcc ever changes NULL to ((void *)0)

this code will need changing.

In addition to above concerns about functionality, this seems terrible style to me. The code is trying to make sure that buffer_size is not zero. It's a comparison of cardinal numbers, and so 0 is the appropriate way to write zero.

<comment><USER6> Buffer_size is a pointer to the actual size (declared as size_t *buffer_size), so comparing to NULL is correct.</comment></comment>


No GPS, no problem: Next-generation navigation - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/no-gps-no-problem-next-generation-navigation/ <comment><USER2> Sensor fusion is not new. In fact if you look at what amounts to sensor fusion in this case, it's still heavily based on satellite timing, not a terrestrial or celestial reference. RF transmissions don't (generally) come with directional data embedded so just having those as locus doesn't help, you need to be able to third reference.

For example you can estimate your location to a cellular BTS based on CRO, however that only gives you distance not azimuth, it's only if you have three towers that you get accurate localization - and even then from the signal alone you don't have a global reference (ie Lat Long or MGRS).

The major overriding issue with geolocation, or localization, is having a consistent reference. Celestial reference is still the best bar none reference. GPS is the best DIGITAL reference because of it's simplicity and accessibility - even though it's accuracy is pretty poor really. Until someone comes up with a more robust, or more easily digitizable consistent reference, then everything will be based on satnav.

<comment><USER3> > Sensor fusion is not new

Nope. In fact, this is the oldest method of radionavigation available. A beacon of some sort sends a radio signal, and a directional antenna identifies the bearing to that signal.

Toss in some sort of embedded signal (like, say, a tone-based code which uniquely identifies a beacon), add another such beacon, and you can fairly reliably locate yourself in a two dimensional space.

Throw in some form of DME transceiver (it receives a radio pulse and returns it with a fixed latency between) to give you a distance to that tower, and you don't even need two of them; just a compass.

I honestly wonder how long until some enterprising soul starts implementing VOR and DME at a city block level...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm missing the significance of this. Don't many devices (especially cell phones) already do this with Wifi & cell tower info? Is the innovation here that there is no GPS receiver used at all? How will that work in rural areas with less signals to use?

<comment><USER5> Wifi and cell towers are used to transmit known positions to the device. This observes and tracks the positions of the signals in real time and then determines the changing position of the device from that info.

I skimmed some of the paper, they discuss it in terms of maintaining accuracy of inertial navigation during loss of GPS signal, not in terms of never using the GPS signals.

<comment><USER6> The cell towers transmitting location data is how assisted GPS already works, the wifi part is how Google does fused location services on Android (with all the other sensors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What improvements does this offer over the already sensor fused (GPS, Wifi, Cell, compass, barometer and inertial sensors) location services Android provides?

</comment><comment><USER7> Add this to another reason why traditional GPS "upgrades" for cars are no longer worthwhile. The other reason being that smartphone navigation works just as well if not better than most car companies' custom systems.

<comment><USER8> It _is_ nice to have if you're an American driving in a different country, though. Maybe not enough to justify the cost, but very helpful to have. American phones are basically crippled within 100ft of the Canadian border.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who works, studies, and has published in this area or work, there is nothing new or novel about what they did. They only repeated work and ideas that have been around for a while and hyped it up.</comment>


Jim Weirich's final GitHub commit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jimweirich/wyriki/commit/d28fac7f18aeacb00d8ad3460a0a5a901617c2d4 <comment><USER2> If you scroll all the way down, there is a special footer just before the comment box.

<comment><USER3> There's a nice header now too.

<comment><USER4> well I'd never thought I'd tear up browsing a github page ...

<comment><USER5> Incredibly moving to see such an outpouring of support, condolences, and remembrances on a commit page like this. Wow.

<comment><USER4> This and the banner github put. I'm usually a little bit thrown off by internet dealing with human emotions, like facebook profiles for passed ones, but this feels like a simple and genuine unprepared reaction from everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Internet has changed the way we think, feel about the people who passed away.

We leave so many footprints online about our existence which we don't think about much. But they have a special meaning for people who care and think about us.

It just reminds and gives some sort of illusion that maybe we are still here, maybe just taking a walk, we will come back home for dinner like every other day.

<comment><USER7> Sorry but I disagree. It may have changed the number of people who feel that way toward a given death (more people are affected by his death than without the internet), but the way each individual affected feel about it hasn't really changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh shit, he just accepted a patch of mine into Rake a few days ago too!

Damn, that sucks.

What was his cause of death?

<comment><USER9> He had a heart attack at work yesterday. Jim was only 57 years old.

<comment><USER10> Heart attacks are so common. Another reason developers should watch and track their health (not saying Jim wasn't healthy). All the pizza and sugary caffeine drinks I've consumed just to keep coding probably wasn't smart.

<comment><USER11> He likely wasn't healthy; you just have to look at a picture of him to see that he was at least 50 lbs overweight (if not more). That much extra weight will increase your risk of heart attack significantly.

<comment><USER12> he's also dead. That's a good indication too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Motivation for us all to write good commit messages.

<comment><USER14> Also to do our best to keep up with our health, so we may live long enough to enjoy life outside of work. It's not all about the money or legacy.

<comment><USER15> ...and learn the warning signs for a heart attack: [http://www.heartattackfacts.org.au/warning- signs/](http://www.heartattackfacts.org.au/warning-signs/)

<comment><USER16> Warning sign of a heart attack is a 300 pound belly.

<comment><USER17> Flamebait but a good lesson

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope someone will continue his work in that repo, it's really sad to see that he was the only contributor and now that he's gone, it'll likely go abandoned.

We're entering the era where the passing of legends happens in real time and is immediately visible. It's crushing to see something like this.

<comment><USER19> There's always forks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very sad news. RIP.

He died at 57. My retirement plan starts at 65 and and I'm in the same physical shape he was. Why should I continue putting money in my 401k if chances are I'll never use it?

<comment><USER16> You can continue to put money there and try to change something about the physical shape? I think accent should be not on "oh crap I won't even use that money" but rather "hey, I WILL use that money". Fitbit and walking is a good start. I am a fat ass too.

<comment><USER21> This is wishful thinking. You could also get hit by a truck (or a scooter), live in the present. My wife recently got cancer she's in great physical condition. And you'll say "on average" blah blah blah and I'll say only the present is guaranteed.

<comment><USER22> It is better for your happiness to have hope about the future than to just give up. Unless you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you should prepare (plan and help enable) for a long life, because the alternative is just too depressing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Poignant to see such a large outpouring of love from the community. Can't help but be inspired...

</comment><comment><USER24> In case anyone wants to see one of his personal sites [http://onestepback.org/](http://onestepback.org/)

</comment><comment><USER25> DHH: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7270098)

</comment><comment><USER26> :(

Feel bad for suggesting there was dog shit on the path of enlightenment! But he fixed the ruby koans package, so we continue to learn!

</comment><comment><USER27> Does anybody know what happened to him?

<comment><USER28> Heart attack.

:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> He was a true geek till the end.</comment>


Show HN: Tiny library for validating US phone numbers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dvx/fonz.js <comment><USER2> It would be better if this referenced the LERG instead of what is effectively a regex. Then you would know if the number has actually been allocated (and a whole host of other information).

<comment><AUTHOR> I reference the NANPA area code DB (which is free on their website); LERG would be nice but that would make it non-free/offline.

<comment><USER2> As somebody with no intention of using this, but solve similar problems on a daily basis... I would make it an optional feature, for those who have access.</comment></comment></comment>


Venture Capital Shifts to Efficiency From Alternative Fuel - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/technology/start-ups/11green.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone know the path for companies based on large capital intensive tasks? I would assume you need a patent, a demo, and then search for investors, but is there any good advice on this topic? The other option seems to be getting a patent, building a demo, and then selling the patent, but that also seems risky.</comment>


Journey From RequireJS to Browserify - <AUTHOR> http://esa-matti.suuronen.org/blog/2013/03/22/journey-from-requirejs-to-browserify/

<comment><USER2> I did the opposite and I have no regrets. RequireJS is wonderful because you only need to refresh your browser to see your latest changes. Browserify has probably come a long way (I switched from Browserify to RequireJS about a year ago) but every time I try to give it another chance, I experience some serious downsides that turn me off.

>Always bundling. No running into build problems later on.

That's not something I would list in the "pro" column. RequireJS can build into a single file for production - it's dead simple to set up.

<comment><USER3> > RequireJS can build into a single file for production - it's dead simple to > set up.

Really? My experience was that it was a nightmare. Now you have to maintain yet another massive JavaScript config file (in addition to your original runtime require config file---don't get me started on that thing).

Plus, having different code run in development versus production led to constant issues.

<comment><USER4> you can actually use the same config file for the runtime and the build

<comment><USER5> That's right! And even use a query hook in your urls to switch between minified/bundled, un-minified/bundled, and un-minified/un-bundled versions of your code base! All with one config file. Just refresh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish the community would standardize on one module format (AMD or commonjs or one of the other lesser-known formats).

</comment><comment><USER7> My biggest gripe with Require is having to wrap every single node.js library you want to use client side in boilerplate.

It's obnoxious for all kinds of reasons.

That said, I have yet to run across a solution that I actually like a whole lot for helping to make server and client side JS cooperate.

<comment><USER6> What I ended up doing is writing a fake 'require' that replicates the nodejs require semantics (e.g. <http://hastebin.com/nipaburipe.js>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had similar experiences with Require and wrote <http://github.com/olegp/joinjs> instead of using Browserify since I found it unnecessarily complicated.</comment>


Ask HN: What sci-fi books are you reading? - <AUTHOR> I recently got a kindle and am looking to download some sci - fi books.  Here are some that have been recommended to me:<p>- Snow Crash<p>- Enders Game<p>- His Dark Materials<p>- Dune in Conquest<p>- Born<p>- Hyperion<p>- Daemon<p>- Tactics of Mistake<p>- The Realty Disfunction<p>- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep<p>What are your favorites? Any tips on where to start? <comment><USER3> Snow Crash is great. Generally I'd recommend some "classics", just to see who treaded some ground first, i.e. who gets copied by everyone.

Isaac Asimov - Foundation (and the rest of the trilogy)

Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land / Starship Troopers / The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man / The Stars My Destination

Jack Vance - The Dying Earth

Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / The Man in the High Castle

Larry Niven - <USER2>

etc. etc.

A list of Hugo Award winners[1] might come in helpful.

Another advantage of having read "the greats" is that if some critic says that new author X writes "in the style of Y" you have a slightly better idea if you might like it.

Tastes vary, of course. Personally I never got what's supposed to be so great about Ender's Game. Teen Mary Sue geek power fantasy with questionable morals. Then again, lots of people said similar things about Heinlein…

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel>

</comment><comment><USER4> Vernor Vinge --- A Fire Upon the Deep. (Also worth seeking out is the hugely influential novella "True Names", but you'd probably have to dig it out of a library someplace.)

Neal Stephenson --- Cryptonomicon. (Present day setting, but with an SF sensibility; ties into his literally epic Baroque Cycle.)

Charles Stross --- Halting State. (Investigation of an MMORPG bank breakin spills out into real-world skulduggery.)

And an oddball that folks here may not have encountered:

Mary Gentle --- Ash, A Secret History. (Starts off with interleaved narratives of a Joan of Arc figure in a strangely different medieval Europe, and a present-day Ph.D. researcher who's investigating her, and finding out that his sources literally don't say the same thing day to day. Then it gets... weirder. Quirky, brilliant, and kind of hard to find in the U.S.)

<comment><USER4> Oh, a little more Stross: the Laundry books, starting with The Atrocity Archives. The British Secret Service has a division which guards against Lovecraftian occult horrors --- and your narrator is one of its I.T. grunts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For mind-expanding, post-singularity hard sci-fi consider anything by Greg Egan. I'd start with Permutation City, or one of his short story collections.

<comment><USER6> I really liked Egan's Diaspora, but I didn't find it available for Kindle, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only book I ever force on people is "A Deepness in the Sky", by Vernor Vinge. If you haven't read it, please do.

I've really been enjoying David Weber's Honor Harrington series, if you're open to military sci-fi. It's not on the Amazon site, but it's easy to get from the Baen Webscriptions site.

Iain M. Banks - "Algebraist" was a lot of fun, easily the best visualization of a gas-giant alien society I've ever read. I read "Matter" a while ago, and keep feeling pulled back to re-read it sometime soon.

For classic sci-fi, I would recommend Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz".

Don't forget to check out all the free public domain books that are available in the Kindle Store. All the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc that you can eat, at no charge.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      * Heretics of Dune

      * Chapterhouse: Dune

      * Lem's Cyberiad

      * PKD's Ubik, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, and Martian Time-Slip

      * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

      * The Illuminatus Trilogy

<comment><AUTHOR> which is your favorite? do these come from any specific subset of sci-fi ?

<comment><USER8> They are all equally excellent in their own way, and fall in to a variety of scifi sub-genres. The HHGTTG, Cyberiad and the Illuminatus could be called scifi parodies (though the Illuminatus is very difficult to categorize, as it spans various genres). The Dune books are much more straight scifi. And the PKD books are really mindbending, kind of nightmarish books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are good books, especially for just starting to read again.

Ubik is my favorite PKD book followed closely by Electric Sheep.

The His Dark Materials isn't really sci-fi so much as fantasy but it is quite a good read (though if you didn't have a kindle it might be embarrassing buying them from the young adult section, they are quite adult though).

I think a huge thing missing from your list is the Foundation series from Asimov (I recommend going in order of publishing, start with Foundation move onto Foundation and Empire then Second Foundation and more if you are into it).

My 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER10> A few additional thoughts based on the comments here:

If you liked "In Conquest Born" - Friedman wrote These Alien Shores, which is a true hacker sci fi, absolutely incredible.

The Book of Skaith by Leigh Bracket is a truely awesome compilation of the three Skaith novels. Leigh helped write the initial Empire Strikes back!

Almost anything by Jack Vance will be good. If you've read The Dying Earth, George RR Martin just produced a tribute called Songs of the Dying Earth with some of the best Sci Fi writers contributing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Depends on what you like. The Dune and Foundation sagas are excellent (although a bit dated). For a more modern feel checkout Alastair Reynolds and Peter Hamilton.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Bruno. What are your favorites?

<comment><USER11> I've just finished Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga and it's definitely one of the best books I've read in a long time.

The first three Dune novels are particularly good. Dune has a tendency to get more philosophical in the later volumes (plans within plans within plans).

If I had to choose an all time favorite I would probably go with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red/Green/Blue Mars). An extremely well researched view of how Mars colonization and terraforming might proceed in a realistic way.

He also has a trilogy on the possible/likely consequences of runaway global warming (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting) but RGB Mars is definitely better.

Edit: "The content of Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars are included on the Phoenix DVD, carried onboard Phoenix, a NASA lander that successfully touched down on Mars in May 2008. The First Interplanetary Library is intended to be a sort of time capsule for future Mars explorers and colonists." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#On_Phoenix_spacecr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#On_Phoenix_spacecraft)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any of the The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. You can start with the first, "Consider Phlebas". They're space opera with a lot of dark wit.

<comment><USER7> "Player of Games" is also a good starting point, it has some of the clearest narrative structure of any of the Culture novels. And from what I can remember, it's a little less dark than Phlebas, to ease you into the depths of Banks' mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(novel_series)>

Seriously, I've read these about twice a year since they came out. His Chaos series is very good too. More fantasy than sci-fi tho.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why has nobody mentioned the author Ben Bova? Especially the Astroid Wars trilogy.

Anything by Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov is a must read!

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't read that much lately, but want to throw in a few names:

\- Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, The Cyberiad, His Masters Voice, Fiasco)

\- William Gibson - evrything worth reading)

\- Bruce Sterling

</comment><comment><USER16> The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell. Hands down one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read.

Oh, and anything by Neil Stephenson (except Zodiac).

</comment><comment><USER17> Damon (plus the rest of that trilogy), Dune - those are two recent favorites off the top of my head</comment>


Netflix to Distribute Original Programming? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/netflix_to_distribute_original_programming.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d813f0961aff5d5%2C0 <comment><USER2> Look Content is still king, Netflix needs to have content no one else has. This is the only way. I can see them offering exclusive agreements to content providers that would be more lucrative than non-exclusive. Their competitors like Amazon will do the same thing.</comment>


Get your website built for $150 - <AUTHOR> http://willdennis.com/post/13199048901/get-your-website-built-for-just-150

<comment><USER2> Badly worded title, should be "How to learn Ruby on Rails for $150". The author points out that it rightfully takes months of your time as well so depending what monetary number you value your time at, you could be very misled into thinking its better to do this than hire a professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is better than hiring a professional. If you're in the business of building and running web businesses you should know the basics, regardless of how much your time is worth.</comment></comment>


The "Hitler at Home" stories of the pre-WWII American press - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-american-medias-awkward-fawning-over-hitlers-taste-in-home-decor <comment><USER2> What's missing from the article is how a large part of the american public (especially upper class) really loved Hitler, as a "great man of state" that would fight against the communism threat.

Also before WWII, anti-semitism was much more widespread in the US than after it.

In fact jew refuges from Germany were often denied entry into the US, as in this classic tragic story:

[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267)

<comment><USER3> Industrialists in the US advocated for (and implemented!) forced society-level eugenics as a way of creating a more "desirable" pool of employees for them to exploit. Germany just copied the US, then the robber barons had to distance themselves from the ideas of controlling humanity person-by-person.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Influence_on_Nazi_Germany) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Euthanasia_programs)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#/media/File:United_States_eugenics_advocacy_poster.jpg) — "Every 7 1/2 minutes a high grade person is born in the US" almost sounds like modern tech/startup "some people are actually just better than others" rhetoric.

<comment><USER4> > Industrialists in the US advocated for (and implemented!) forced society- > level eugenics

That's a pretty revisionist phrasing. Eugenics had a much broader base in society than _anyone_ , regardless of politics, should be comfortable with.

From the wikipedia page you link to:

"Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community. By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum."

"By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers and professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting eugenic legislation."

"Public acceptance in the U.S. was the reason eugenic legislation was passed. Almost 19 million people attended the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, open for 10 months from February 20 to December 4, 1915."

<comment><USER3> But legislation and implementation was largely backed by the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Carnegies, and the other shadowy economic 0.001% people of their day.

(citations left as an exercise for the reader)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This kind of thing still happens. I'll bet if you dug into the history of those Hitler pieces, you'd find out the Nazis paid some PR firm to arrange those articles. That's how it happens now. I'm sure it was the same then.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the- only-remaining-online-copy-of-vogues-asma-al-assad-profile/250753/)

[http://www.thenation.com/article/professors-paid-qaddafi- pro...](http://www.thenation.com/article/professors-paid-qaddafi-providing- positive-public-relations/)

<comment><USER6> This is very common. Brutal and dictatorial regimes often buy PR and lobbying from K street, also put ads in magazines.

If you see "Uzbekistan: A misunderstood gem" (just an example) touting how great it is, and how torture we hear about is all fabricated lies, in full page add in Foreign Affairs, it is obvious what is going on. But they can of course be more subtle and are buy academics, like you showed in the links. Those professors seem to the outside world as "independent" thinkers/researchers. So if they then start publishing papers on "Benefits of business development in Central Asia" mentioning Uzbekistan as a great place to do business, it is a bit less obvious what is happening. Someone might get fooled.

This also happens with climate and other major areas that affect powerful interests.

<comment><USER5> Yeah it's bad.

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention Walter Duranty. He was writing around the time of these Hitler articles. As far as I know, no one paid him to do what he did - he just did it for the sake of journalist activism or something. There's a lot of that too.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, I guess with a bit of anachronism and hindsight anything could be made to look sensational and exciting.

<comment><USER2> The whole point of the article is that hindsight should have already been there at 1939 -- 6 years after Hitler came to power, with Main Kampf already published, with the Kristallnacht and tons of other signs...

<comment><USER8> Could it really have been there? Remember how the US looked back in these days: The US had to invent its "moral high ground" and chose to be against racism all of a sudden mostly because it had to justify the costs of WWII.

I am an outsider but I could imagine, that this artificially introduced moral is part of the reason why racism and other problems are still big in the US: The people generally believe that they already have the moral high ground and after all won against the evil. It is much easier to handle 800k+ refugees like Germany will do this year, when your moral self-awareness is a bit more toned down to say the least and you still think you owe the world.

<comment><USER9> Pearl Harbor was the only justification needed in the United States for the costs of World War II, and anti-Japanese racism was a massive part of the war propaganda at the time. Of course, too many discussions of the war run into another sort of racism--a Eurocentrism that forgets that the war also happened on the other side of the world, and for a much longer time at that.

<comment><USER8> Pearl Harbor is part of the reason for anti-nazi propaganda: America was mostly isolationistic or even pacifistic at that time (maybe not everything was bad back in the days?) and the people had to be convinced why they would want to fight in Europe while they were being attacked by Japan.

<comment><USER10> People often forget that it was Germany that declared war on the United States. Isolationism (and even pacifism) rarely survives when one is on the receiving end of an act of war.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_\(1941\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had a set of atlases from 1937. It was amazingly complementary towards Germany's leadership, but did mention that people of certain religions and races should avoid traveling there. I'm still in awe of how people can compartmentalize things to the point of paradox.

<comment><USER9> Do you get the same sense when you see advertisements for Emirates or Qatar Airlines, or advertisements and guidebooks for tourism to places like Dubai and Qatar?

<comment><USER11> I honestly don't know. I don't really see a lot of advertisements for the gulf and its not a place I want to travel. Sure seems popular with the rich though.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, but consider that, at least before the war, Germany was still thought of as, well, Germany--a decently well-developed country with lots of culture and history. In other words, a reasonable tourist destination. In 1937, passenger travel between the US and Germany was popular enough to justify a regular line for the Hindenberg, until it burst into flames.

Remember that our current perception of Nazi Germany is largely based on (a) human rights abuses that largely happened during the Second World War, (b) the fact that we were on opposing sides of that war, and (c) the fact that Nazis don't have any influential sympathizers left. This isn't to say that the Nazis weren't as bad as commonly thought, but they were certainly not unique in such.

<comment><USER11> Evil is not unique, but Hitler and his bunch earned their place in history with their mad genocide. They started before WWII and continued to its final days. Stalin, our ally, was not an innocent and killed millions. The 20th century is all of history wrapped in the shiny efficiency of better technology.

People will ignore quite a lot that conflicts with their desired perception. It is amazingly hard for the a being so built to pattern match to break from patterns. Russia was trading with Germany up until they were attacked.

On a personal level, I see celebrities going to places that have awful human rights record then come back to the US and tell us how bad we are. I have little use for hypocrisy in this life. Yes, Germany was popular before the war which just means their are plenty of ignorant (both ill-informed and willfully) and useful idiots in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> anti-shill what has been shoved down the memory hole is that hitler was a stooge/front man for the upper class and the corporations...and that was why the media here loved him....they always love those at the top...

read the essay called 'I was Hitler's Boss'...it's online...published anonymously in the 1930s, this essay makes clear that the general idea of the nazis and the third reich was already in place before hitler was even hired by the reichswehr...the most well-known hitler biographer Kershaw identified the author of the essay as Karl Mayr, who was indeed hitler's boss..

read the essay...this is what it says:

the german upper class & corporations were afraid that the same thing that was happening in russia during the bolshevik revolution was going to happen in germany...and indeed there were dozens of burgeoning worker's populist parties springing up...and what did those parties want? To disempower the rich and powerful...so the rich and powerful began using the german army to spy on and subvert these populist uprisings...they hired hitler because he was a war hero (although recent books make it clear that hitler did not deserve his iron cross and was known as a brown noser among the troops during WW1).

They hired hitler and put him to work spying on these working class parties that were the enemies of the rich and powerful.

As mayr writes, when hitler was hired, he was basically a pauper, and was just a lost dog looking for a master...didn't care squat about jews or anything like that...but the reichswehr and the upper class were planning to make the jews a substitute scapegoat for the rich, as mayr explains...the jews were a big part of the educated class, and those were a big part of the bolshevik revolution....so the planners of the third reich has already set their cap for the jews when hitler was first hired....

hitler was indeed born with an undescended testicle, which made him an outcast, mayr explains....so when he was a boy he wandered the hills making speeches...that talent came to the fore during his spying on the populist parties...and so the reichswehr and their corporate backers had found their talented orator to lead a fake-populist version of the true-populist workers parties that the upper class/corporations feared.

Now you know why hitler was actually quite popular with the media...the media is and always has been supported by advertising purchases by corporations...

<comment><USER12> Not a bad rant, but too many ellipses, and went off the rails when you started talking about Hitler's nuts.

<comment> anti-shill read the essay

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is no nuance in gas chambers.

<comment><USER14> I'm willing to accept the claim that there's not a lot of nuance to WWII era Germany's actions and motives, etc. ("Schindler's List" notwithstanding.) But to claim theres no nuance to the people fighting against Germany, seems ahistorical.

<comment><USER13> The question was about levels of anti-semitism. The highest level is gas chambers.

<comment><USER15> The question was actually about the portrayal of US motives during WW2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do Europeans actually believe that the main problem with Blacks in the US is racism?

<comment><USER2> Do Americans actually believe it's not?

Do people understand systemic injustice, and what coming from being a nation of slaves merely 150 years ago, and having legal injustice until merely 40 years ago and implicit injustice until today can do to a people?

<comment><USER16> A mere 70 years ago Jews were being chased through Europe and killed like dogs. My only point was that there are bigger problems than racism. The roots may be from Jim Crow and such but the lack of progress is disheartening and seemingly intractable.

<comment><USER2> > _A mere 70 years ago Jews were being chased through Europe and killed like > dogs._

However all of them were white, educated (a lot of them highly educated), and managed to migrate to places where they fit with white society and were not persecuted for being jews anymore. Blacks didn't have that.

> _The roots may be from Jim Crow and such but the lack of progress is > disheartening and seemingly intractable._

Well, lack of progress is relative. From just-freed slaves, peniless and uneducated, now there is a decent black middle class.

But if your grantparents were dead poor (think Jim Crow blacks in the South in the 20's and 40's), then you don't get to jump that far in a 3 generations.

Especially if your father had to face discrimination (in schooling, hiring, loans etc) up until the seventies or even more.

Latinos have the same problems.

Jews, Italians, Irish not so much -- they started from much better position than slaves, and they are white so could fit in to business etc better. Besides they didn't originate from places like Alabama, Mississippi, like most of blacks who migrated North did etc -- they came to NY, Chicago etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Online reviews are broken. Wi-card - Yelp meets Path - <AUTHOR> http://wi-card.ch/ Born of frustration, we've built this website to have a structured way to memorize the places you've been and get recommandations from your close friends. <comment><USER2> The problem I have is that none of my friends or family use existing dominant sites like Yelp, so I'm doubtful I'd have anyone I know using this with me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Comments and feedbacks are welcome!</comment>


Ford moving all production of small cars from U.S. to Mexico - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/09/14/ford-moving-all-production-small-cars-mexico/90354334/ <comment><USER2> I think it's funny to see the "all" term be thrown about so much - yes, I'm sure volume wise it's significant but across the model lines, it's really just - wait for it - two models.

Oh wow, the Fiesta!

Look, I'm being glib but until Ford decides to move its true cash-cows like the F-150 out of the country, I'm more inclined to deal with the nature of globalization in manufacturing in rational ways. Calling the move "inherently bad" is not my perspective. I remember when it seemed like Ford couldn't design and build their way out of the dark ages, and then, lo and behold, their European operations provided some much needed quality and design and production guidance and it stabilized a large section of their global footprint. Global companies have global concerns!

<comment><USER3> Well, three: C-Max, Focus, and Fiesta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This agreement was made back in 2015, so it's not really news. [http://www.autonews.com/article/20150709/OEM01/150709864/for...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20150709/OEM01/150709864/ford- to-move-production-of-focus-c-max-from-michigan-assembly)

The posted article fails to mention Ford will be producing two brand new vehicles in this plant: the Ranger and a compact SUV, the Bronco.

<comment><USER4> The return of the Ranger will be very welcome to me, if they don't screw it up...

<comment><USER5> I never got a good explanation of why they stopped building them. They were good little trucks, not quite Tacoma-grade, but pretty capable.

<comment><USER6> The best explanation is that they were starting to impinge on sales of the F-150 -- which is probably the most profitable vehicle ever produced by humans.

<comment><USER7> The problem was CAFE; the Ranger was too small and too inefficient to meet increasingly stringent CAFE standards. CAFE rules are based on the "footprint" of the vehicle, basically the area between the wheels, and in 2012 the "light truck" target would edge past the Ranger's footprint/economy combination. There's a detailed article here: [http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed- com...](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-compact- trucks-and-station-wagons/)

Redesigning the Ranger to have a larger footprint results in a mid-sized pickup only slightly smaller than the base model F-150, which is where the sales-cannibalism problem comes in.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the link, I hadn't looked too closely at CAFE previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We are going thru a transition now, moving an assembly operation to Mexico. It is a royal PITA. Customs paperwork is insane. The culture also, hard to get a blunt honest answer about how it is "really going" at the factory.

The key to a successful move is to have a native US person embedded in the Mexico plant. They can keep operations running and put out fires.

NAFTA requires lots of paperwork and reconciliation. If one can navigate the paperwork requirements, then yes it is free trade. If not, have to pay an assist to move goods back and forth.

<comment><USER9> It helps if you speak spanish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Decided to go to goodcarbadcar.net to get US sales numbers (they have Canada as well) to see how much of this volume it represents.

In 2015 the Ford Brand sold ~2.502M vehicles in the US. For the cars being moved over to Mexico...

* C-MAX - 21,768

* Fiesta - 64,458

* Focus - 202,478

* Total - 288,704

About 11.5% of units sold in the US, and I think all the vehicles they sell in the US on their B3 (Fiesta) platform. Interestingly, not all C1 platform cars are moving over, as the Edge (124,000 units) and Transit Connect (52,000 units) will continue to be built in the US, again, because they offer better front-end margin.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if that's because of the chicken tax? The Transit Connect would fall into that category for sure (at least in cargo/work van trims). Not sure about the Edge (it's passenger only, so the tax might not apply).

<comment><USER12> Transit connect is made in turkey and Spain I believe. They tried to get around the chicken tax but ended up losing to customs.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I think they were importing them as passenger vans, then de-optioning at port in Baltimore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NAFTA makes this possible.

But it's hard for me to see (in this case) the advantage of NAFTA for the USA. There are now 675,000 auto jobs in Mexico. The majority of that production is exported to the USA.

How does that help the USA? Do we really make it up in the goods we export to Mexico?

<comment><USER14> We can already buy Ford Focuses super cheap. With the amount of competition in the small car market it will only get cheaper.

By having the lower priced Mexican labor build the vehicles these can keep getting cheaper without major investment in technology that is unlikely to pay for itself and without reduction in American worker's wages.

This also allows American Factories to make higher profits by focusing on making higher margin models without Ford having to give up a market segment.

Also, Security is generally better at American plants so by allowing the foreign factories to only build the crap models they are unlikely to compete on the unauthorized manufacturing market.

Also, This does put some money and infrastructure into Mexico so we can benefit as their country has slightly fewer people try to cross the border illegally.

This is simple division of labor. It lets Americans focus on more profitable things, there is no way this is bad for Americans.

<comment><USER15> > without reduction in American worker's wages.

Those jobs would need to be replaced with something paying a similar wage for this to be true. Otherwise you'd move along the demand curve for labor to a point with the same number of total jobs and lower wages paid for each.

<comment><USER16> What are "those jobs" you're referring to? This announcement also includes new models produced in the US and no layoffs as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As US auto makers adjust their manufacturing chains to squeeze more profits out..I wonder if there is not a stock play on US suppliers vs Mexico Suppliers?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wonder if US auto workers took a page from French workers would US mfgs move production so glibly.

<comment><USER19> What page is that?

<comment><USER20> General strikes, riots, car-burning. American blue-collar workers would rather be dismantled one bit at a time, then act collectively.

<comment><USER21> I'm glad American workers are above general strikes, riots and car-burning. Those are the actions of children, not of adults.

<comment><USER20> They are the actions of adults who are about to have their means of survival taken away.

Why are you against freedom of association (general strikes)? Should people be serfs, without the right to refuse to work, in protest of working conditions?

<comment><USER14> He isn't against freedom, he is against childish gestures, none of which actually change the general trend of the car sales in the market.

If small economy cars must be built cheaply then protesting with fires and vandalism is more likely to get a factory shut down because of missed goals.

Moving these low end models to Mexico with their cheap labor allows the Americans to build higher margin models and actually grow the company. No wonder France has about 1/3rd the car exports the US does or about 1/7th exports of Germany.

<comment><USER22> > No wonder France has about 1/3rd the car exports the US does or about 1/7th > exports of Germany.

Who cares which country has more exports or GDP? I care about quality of life, not which shareholders are reaping the most benefits.

<comment><USER14> One is a proxy for the other. The more your export the more money you probably have. In general the more money the higher your quality of life.

Stated another way American factory worker's quality of life is good enough they have never needed to degenerate to setting fires. They have more effective systems in place.

<comment><USER20> If all of a country's exports were produced by entirely robot-ran factories with no employees, the country could be quite wealthy... With absolutely terrible quality of life. (Without aggressive redistribution.)

Wealth only trickles down in fairy tales, or through low profit margins.

<comment><USER14> That is not yet possible. When that does become possible you statement will be true.

The quality of life then becomes dependent on whether or not people need to fight for a UBI and other wealth ditributing mechanisms because likely tons of jobs have been completely automated destroying conventional labor markets..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford) Ford supported the Nazis and american anti semitism

very public knowledge.

<comment><USER24> In case you didn't realize, he's no longer alive, so I'm not sure how this is relevant. Besides, he donated most of his wealth to create what was then one of the largest humanitarian foundations in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I fail to see how this is technology or startup related, and therefore appropriate to HN. Seems more political/financial so not a good choice for HN (especially frontpage).

(edit: for the downvoters... [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." but do what you must.)

<comment><USER26> Supply chain is certainly part of technology.</comment></comment>


A lack of sales focus will destroy you - see why this startup is killing it - <AUTHOR> http://www.attendly.com/a-lack-of-sales-focus-will-destroy-your-business-see-why-this-startup-is-killing-it/

<comment><USER2> Whilst funny, and the photos cute, surely we're past this?

"Annual leave? Sure mate, when you're fired", yeah or when you're unemployed from burnout and a lack of balance.

It is well understood that workaholics don't necessarily deliver the best results (<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/902-fire-the-workaholics/>).

"I'm sick is another way of saying I don't like making sales" - that attitude drives people to not take leave when required. Taking one day off early in a bug can stomp it on its ugly head, but soldering on like a hero can end up knocking you out of action for a week.

I know I'd far rather have my sales person off for one day than a whole week.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree some of the quotes go too far, but I don't think the startup in question means them ALL to be taken literally.

Is it an agressive way to drive a sales culture? Absolutely.

Is it for everyone? No.

But you have to admire the sheer focus and drive they have to build up their sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like an awesome strategy... for managing green kids straight out of school.</comment>


Natural Light Cloaking - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.1780v1.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a video of a fish being cloaked: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kslerc5rpyek38/ChenS1.mov](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kslerc5rpyek38/ChenS1.mov)</comment>