The Epic Rise of John D. Rockefeller - <AUTHOR> http://thehustle.co/the-history-of-john-d-rockefeller-standard-oil <comment><USER2> If this short bio is interesting, you may enjoy the much more in-depth biography, _Titan_, by Ron Chernow.

In addition to an incredibly thorough (and even-handed, IMO) treatment of Rockefeller, I found it an interesting perspective on the post-war period in the US.

<comment><USER3> Cool anecdote from Titan, one of countless:

      Rockefeller was relentless in ferreting out ways to cut costs. During an inspection tour of a Standard Oil plant in New York City, for instance, he observed a machine that soldered the lids on five-gallon cans of kerosene destined for export. Upon learning that each lid was sealed with 40 drops of solder, he asked, "Have you ever tried 38?" It turned out that when 38 drops were applied, a small percentage of the cans leaked. None leaked with 39, though. "'That one drop of solder', said Rockefeller,...'saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled--became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars"' (Chernow 1998, pp. 180-81). Over the course of his career at the helm of Standard Oil, "Rockefeller cut the unit costs of refined oil almost in half" (Ibid., p. 150).

<comment><USER4> Version that's possible to read:

"Rockefeller was relentless in ferreting out ways to cut costs. During an inspection tour of a Standard Oil plant in New York City, for instance, he observed a machine that soldered the lids on five-gallon cans of kerosene destined for export. Upon learning that each lid was sealed with 40 drops of solder, he asked, "Have you ever tried 38?" It turned out that when 38 drops were applied, a small percentage of the cans leaked. None leaked with 39, though. "'That one drop of solder', said Rockefeller,...'saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled--became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars"' (Chernow 1998, pp. 180-81). Over the course of his career at the helm of Standard Oil, "Rockefeller cut the unit costs of refined oil almost in half" (Ibid., p. 150).

<comment><USER3>
      What, don't you like monospace fonts??

<comment><USER5> On mobile, your version simply scrolls off the page with no option for reading it. Worse than useless, actually.

<comment><USER6> It's actually like that on my laptop to, although slightly better, since I can actually scroll it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.history.com/shows/men-who-built- america](http://www.history.com/shows/men-who-built-america) Here is a really nice historical drama that does a wonderful job of explaining the dynamics between the vanderbilts and JD.

</comment><comment><USER8> "To this day, there is little evidence on the University of Chicago campus that it has anything to do with Rockefeller." ...except may be for the campus centerpiece known as the _Rockefeller_ Chapel where all the school ceremonies take place? (depicted in the photo right above the quoted sentence) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Chapel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Chapel)

<comment><USER9> Rockefeller Chapel what with the tower that taller than any other structure on campus? Supposedly there is even a university mandate which forbids anything taller to ever be built on campus. Also, how about the commons area in the student center- i.e Hutchinson Commons in the Reynolds Club. As you walk in, along the sides on the walls are portraits of the university's presidents. But dead center on the wall for all who enter to see is a much larger portrait of JDR- with his name and title "Founder". The man whom the commons and outside court is named after and who can accurately be described as the soul of the University of Chicago- Robert Maynard Hutchins- has his portrait regaled off to the side of the JDR centerpiece. lol @ "little evidence of philanthropy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I kept thinking of Bill Gates while reading this, and not just because both of them turned to philanthropy after building their empires. The only reason Bill Gates is not richer than Rockefeller is because of the anti-monopoly legislation that was invented to stop Rockefeller. Without the antitrust lawsuit Microsoft would have been able to kill off Apple and Netscape in the 90s and kept the web bottled up within Internet Explorer in the 00s.

<comment><USER11> > Without the antitrust lawsuit Microsoft would have been able to kill off > Apple and Netscape in the 90s and kept the web bottled up within Internet > Explorer in the 00s.

I used Netscape in the 90s. It was a crummy product that crashed if you looked at it. IE was much more stable. IE was better, much better. Opera was also available, but there wasn't much to recommend it.

As for Apple in the 90s, Apple nearly destroyed itself all by itself. Check any of the innumerable books on the history of Apple.

<comment><USER12> Netscape was best until about version 3. It had some niceties that IE lacked, actually IE was not even acceptable. Netscape 4.7 was "not so nice" and IE 4 was faster so, although terribly unsafe, it dominated market for years.

Oh, and by the time Netscape 4.7 and IE 4.01 were released, Microsoft had already destroyed Netscape's business.

<comment><USER11> I don't remember which Netscape I used, but I started with it. It was awful in the constant crashing. I tried IE, and it crashed too, but only about half as often. If Netscape crashed half as often as Netscape, I would have stuck with it.

If you produce an obviously inferior product, it's a bit unfair to blame the competition for your own failures.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for reminding me of how common crashes and other general frustrations were in personal computing only as recently as the 90s.

Someone who is currently 18 years old never experienced computing when it wasn't near seamless as it is today.

<comment><USER12> Actually, no. That's not true at all. Crashes were as rare as today if you chose the right programs and were properly conservative with what you installed. I suffered very few crashes even with Windows 3. I won't say Windows 95 was rock solid, but I didn't see the infamous BSoD more than a couple of times a year... and I was a heavy user!!

Do you know what was different? A lot of people had very poor judgement about what to install and what to trust. Also faulty drivers, but this still happens today! No further than last night this very computer reset when starting Firefox :-/

I'm very surprised to see this revisionist version of computer history. I can't help thinking that there's some vested interest in this criticism. At the time it was some sort of fad among Linux fans against Windows dominance. I also liked Linux, but it was very annoying to see this kind of (reverse!) FUD.

Now it seems like it's some other "interest group" that's spreading it. Depressing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Although Standard Oil was eventually forced to break into multiple companies because it was ruled a monopoly, BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips and Chevron (among others) are all subsidiaries of Standard Oil."

This is not accurate. BP stands for British Petroleum and has never been part of Standard Oil. BP has bought a couple of companies that used to be part of Standard Oil.

</comment><comment><USER15> _" To crush his competitors, Rockefeller would create a shortage of the railroad tank cars that transported oil. He'd then buy up all the barrels on the market so his competitors would have no place to store or ship their oil. He bought up all the available chemicals that were necessary to refine oil."_

i thought it's common strategy played in AOE....

this post makes a great companion with another recent post about Uber on Lyft.

<comment><USER3> Hahahahaha as an avid AoE player I enjoy this observation. Indeed I do always sell my excess food ASAP to drive down the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably no assessment of Rockefeller and his influence is complete without mention of Junior and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre) .

</comment><comment><USER17> "Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." \--Rothschild in 1744

You can't beat it.

</comment><comment><USER18> What do you think people in 1885 would think of the internet, where you can read some random grade school student's term paper without even leaving your desk?

<comment><USER19> I don't think it's far fetched for someone in the late 19th century to imagine an automated, in-home telegraph system that printed out content for someone to read. Someone might have even had their university assignments sent over telegraph in an emergency. I believe Western Union used to deliver telegrams (via telegraph) on demand for customers.

Stock updates were also sent automatically over telegraph starting in the 1870s for anyone that owned a ticker tape machine[1]. There were also teleprinters that sent news stories and other information to those that owned them.

Fax machines were also invented in the mid 19th Century and allowed for the transmission of signatures and drawings over telegraph[2].

The basics for an asynchronous, global communication system have been around since the 1800s, just not as cheap and user friendly as what we enjoy today.

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Rockefeller had a peculiar face, and it wasn't helped by his alopecia episode. You can see where the lizard people conspiracies find fodder.

<comment><USER21> In that one photo he looks, literally, like Lord Voldemort. That can't have helped his PR at all since I'm fairly sure newspapers were able to print photos by this point.

<comment><USER21> Ah, yes. From the source book 'Titan':

"Coming on the eve of the muckraking era, Rockefeller's alopecia had a devastating effect on his image: It made him look like a hairless ogre, stripped of all youth, warmth, and attractiveness, and this played powerfully on people's imaginations. For a time, he wore a black skullcap, giving him the impressively gaunt physiognomy of a Renaissance prelate. One French writer wrote that "under his silk skull-cap he seems like an old monk of the inquisition such as one sees in the Spanish picture galleries." 46"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's shocking that they present this story as a tale of virtue. If being an entrepreneur is a noble calling, then we should be ashamed of Rockerfeller for his ruthless tactics, not praising him for it. If we want to praise capitalists and capitalism, then we should be villifying Rockerfeller for his monopolistic tactics. He was too clever by half as a CEO, since his tactics eventually brought down the ire of the government. And he felt the need to atone for his horrific business practices by charity, assuming that one of them would cancel out the other. He deserves to have the ruthless, terrible reputation the article laments him having.

<comment><USER11> > horrific business practices

I recommend that you read "Titan" by Chernow. Rockefeller is mostly guilty simply of being very rich. During his career, he caused the price of kerosene to drop 70%, and stay down. This was good for the expanding country.

During the anti-trust trial, Rockefeller was steadily losing market share to nimbler, aggressive competitors. There was no need for the government to break it up, it was coming apart anyway.

All businesses rise and fall over time. The popular narrative that, unchecked by government, a business will eventually rise to absorb everything is not borne out by practice.

<comment><USER23> > All businesses rise and fall over time. The popular narrative that, > unchecked by government, a business will eventually rise to absorb > everything is not borne out by practice.

Interesting assertion, do you have any books/data to back that up?

<comment><USER24> The entire history of economics backs this up. The only instances of long- lasting monopolies are the result of government coercion. The instability of large, profitable businesses has both a solid theoretical foundation and an unending abundance of empirical data.

If you ever think you have found a single instance of monopoly lasting any significant length of time, look deeper - with absolute certainty there is a government gun backing it up.

<comment><USER25> _" If you ever think you have found a single instance of monopoly lasting any significant length of time, look deeper - with absolute certainty there is a government gun backing it up."_

But that caveat lets the horse out of the barn, since the gains made by monopolies can purchase lobbyists and thence the government gun. Disney Studios has been around 93 years at this point.

<comment><USER26> What, precisely, does Disney have a monopoly on? Last I checked there were at least several major movie studios, TV stations, and animation houses doing very well for themselves independently of the mouse.

<comment><USER25> Mickey Mouse.

Intellectual property is considered a monopoly assigned by the government.

My example aside, is it really so hard to believe that successful companies can influence regulation? Monopolies are exceptionally successful companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What are the sources for the nonfiction in the article besides Titan?

<comment><AUTHOR> The history channel show (men who built america), the book, a few podcasts with the book's author, and a few clips from youtube from the history channel and biography channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes, that's what the world needs. More ruthlessness...</comment>


Startups: Working in "bizarro world" - <AUTHOR> http://www.charuhas.com/working-in-bizarro-world/

<comment><USER2> "Failure is good." - I think they need to clarify a little, failure is generally considered bad, but when followed by success is seen in a much more favorable light.

<comment><USER3> The subhead says "failure is good" but reading further it becomes clear that what he's saying is "failures come with the territory" Most startups fail. Successes are of course better, but failures are expected and not seen as negatives, more as learning experiences and motivators to succeed on the next attempt.

<comment><USER4> Or how about "the presence of failure is good", since it means people are trying things and taking risks.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather go with "failure is better than not trying at all", which seems to be exactly what he meant but is also so obvious that I doubt it'd make a good blog post. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article - nice to know my misfit credentials are finally useful.</comment>


How to Overcome Your Fatal Flaw - <AUTHOR> http://trevorowens.tumblr.com/post/11021493592/how-to-overcome-your-fatal-flaw <comment><USER2> Couldn't agree more on the point about how waking up early sets the tone for the rest of the day. When I get up on time, I seem to get way more done than if I get up 1-2 hrs later than I wanted. Probably just psychological, but if I get up late, I guess I think "welp, I've already effed up today so it won't matter if I eff up on everything else!"

<comment><USER3> I find I work best at the hours of 12am-4am because (i) I'm naturally a night owl and (ii) everyone else is sleeping so no one breaks my concentration. It does make for some drowsy mornings...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the same way, the only reason I'm changing is because as a CEO you need to show up first

<comment><USER4> Well I don't know your particular situation, but I think I'd respect a CEO/dev manager more if they said: I appreciate some people work better at different times and personally I'm a night owl, I trust you guys to get stuff done, come in when it maximises your own productivity (within constraints of having enough time overlap where necessary).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm all for people coming in when they want to and can come in or are most productive, that doesn't mean the leader shouldn't be the first one in the office. The post is also about lack of a regular schedule, which goes back to consistency. Leaders have to be consistent

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it's fatal, how come it hasn't killed you yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> the worst death is a slow and gnawing one, which a fatal flaw will lead to

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > One thing I've been thinking about recently is fatal flaw's

I think I'm picking up on yours already! No wait, it's this:

> Hi, I'm Trevor and here I write about startups, leadership, and personal > development.

<comment><USER7> Also, apostrophe misuse, but that one is usually survivable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I get up early, traffic is about 2x worse. That's mainly why I prefer going to work later. I usually get in around 10.

<comment><USER9> I would surmise that your definition of early is probably not early enough. :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: GradeTrain – Automated grading for programming courses - <AUTHOR> https://www.gradetrain.com

<comment><AUTHOR> GradeTrain is an auto-grading and code feedback tool designed to assist educators with their programming project grading and review responsibilities. We're currently in Beta and are looking for feedback!

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting. But surely there are such things available at universities already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! Some top tier universities do have things they like to say do automated grading, but even students and teachers I've talked to at Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc. say that they don't work well and are very difficult to use. They also don't have any of the awesome code feedback tools that GradeTrain does :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh... looks pretty cool. What languages do you support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently C++ and MATLAB. We'll be adding Java support during the next couple weeks. Our system is setup to handle new types of code very well - <USER2> support for a language is as simple as installing the version of the language you want and adding < 40 lines of code :)

<comment><USER5> I would definitely be interested if you added python, and Visual Basic into the mix!

<comment><AUTHOR> Python support is coming soon - which I'm super excited for because I love Python :)

If you get a sec, shoot us an email at contact [at] gradetrain [dot] com. Would like to hear more about how you'd be using these languages - we often find that our users have different ways of utilizing the language than we do as developers!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Passport Payment (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20031002153020/http://www.doublewide.net/ <comment><USER2> Could you imagine doing this today? You'd probably get lawyers making you sign agreements saying your payment of the domain renewal is not a ownership interest in the domain and threatening to take you to court for renewing their domain.

<comment><USER3> I actually think it would be the opposite now. Things like bug bounties or a huge PR problem by the affected problem posting it on Twitter are new things. It was more prevalent to send lawyers for accessing public but not meant to be public URLs back in the days than it's now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to the story, it took somewhere between 13 and 19 hours for passport.com to resolve properly after he renewed it for Microsoft. Is that normally how long it takes to reactivate a domain name that has gone into a renewal grace period, or was something different back then?

Perhaps the NXDOMAIN response was cached by ISPs for an especially long time because it was such a frequently visited hostname?

<comment><USER5> It used to be that nameserver changes with TLDs were measured in days, not minutes. Even today some TLDs continue to operate this way.

<comment><USER6> What are reasonable timeframe expectations for nameserver changes now?

<comment><USER7> That depends on the TTL of your DNS records. But if it's a brand-new registration for a dot-com then I've found DNS queries work within 3 minutes of me completing GoDaddy's regustration (and using GoDaddy's DNS zone hosting) even through my ISP's DNS servers (provided there's no cached NXDOMAIN results).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Try to go passport.com nowadays. It redirects you to Bing and search "passport" as result. Handy.

<comment><USER9> I had an issue with my router which now uses myfiosgateway.com as the router config though it is hosted on the router (presumably so it can serve https?) And mark monitor showed up with a big "this is the actual internet so you don't wanna visit it" page when I was routed to the actual .com, kinda similar

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > in addition to a new copy of Visual Studio 6.0 (which I need to compile and > run the decss program to decode my DVD's so that I can play them under > Linux)

Why would you need VS6 to compile a program for Linux?

<comment><USER11> DeCSS was a windows-only program back in those days.

<comment><USER12> Also, because it's a joke and is funny :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused, how did he pay for someone else's domain? Was there no authentication?

<comment><USER14> Back then, control was authenticated as necessary for the proper functioning, but even today I see no reason why renewal should have to be gated behind login walls. Actually, I'd even prefer it not to be, because you might, in a pinch, be prevented from paying for them yourself electronically, having to call in a favor and promise to pay back as soon as you see that friend.

Or you just prefer to pay someone cash for them to top up your domain, because you don't like mixing money and the internet, but have e.g. a personal domain for email.

<comment><USER15> > even today I see no reason why renewal should have to be gated behind login > walls.

This actually reminds me on a somewhat interesting social engineering "vulnerability" a little while back[0].

1\. The hacker would call into Amazon and say that the website was acting up and they needed to add a card to the victim's account. It wouldn't take much effort because why would it?

2\. The hacker'd call right back and say that "their" email had been compromised and they needed to change it/add a new one and reset the password. You supply the card you just gave (and name/billing address, but those aren't too hard to find)

3\. Use that to hop on to the account and grab the last 4 digits of the victim's real card.

You now have the victim's billing address and last 4 of a credit card. A surprising amount of authentication power.

I think the lesson here is if it _can_ be privileged information, it _is_. Even if it's privileged for someone else.

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking...](https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/)

<comment><USER16> That's a useless hack at the time. You could generate your own credit card numbers back then using a formula. The name/expiry date or address were not used for verification.

So ordering from a fake credit card was easy. Finding the drop shipping location was the hard part.

<comment><USER2> Your fake credit card isn't going to have a balance.

<comment><USER16> It didn't matter because in order to check someone had to call and wait an hour so no one did in mail order purchases/shopping networks because you had an address to send the police to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> perhaps the most surprising to me is the apparent willingness to enter credit card info online in 1999. I wasn't around for this period but wasn't the conventional wisdom back then that this was insecure? hence PayPal?

<comment><USER18> No, not at all?

SSL had been around for 6 years already, credit card transactions were quite common, especially with known, reputable hosts (Network Solutions can be safely be assumed to have qualified at the time)

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, not all websites used https or enforced it on pages that should have had it. It was very common to see payment forms submitted over http. That is why browsers evolved to the point where Chrome now won't submit certain types of html form fields over non-https.

<comment><USER18> I'm aware of it - even talked some people out of attempting ecommerce without SSL about 20 years ago (not all successfully).

But the linked article specifically mentions an HTTPS link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's always nice to hear about people doing the right thing. Thanks for sharing the story.

</comment><comment><USER21> Biggest anachronism is his mailing (maybe home) address and phone number at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great move, kudos to Micheal!

</comment><comment><USER23> This happened in 1999/2000, maybe someone could add (2000) to the title?</comment>


Chaos Monkey Guide for Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.gremlin.com/chaos-monkey/ <comment> yavor-atanasov At the BBC a few years ago we completely replaced our Chaos Monkey setup with a "chaos-lambda". It's extremely simple to setup and saves us a chunk of cash in terms of compute and maintenance. I'm sure Chaos Monkey is more featureful, but a lot of times you don't really need these features. If you just need something that ticks on a cron and kills instances at random across your estate and you have a good amount AWS accounts, have a look.

[https://github.com/bbc/chaos-lambda](https://github.com/bbc/chaos-lambda)

It's always good to see this "chaos culture" being promoted as it drives best engineering practices in terms of architecting, testing and monitoring resilient systems. However it's also interesting to see how at times this space gets inflated, packaged and sold as this big complicated thing that requires "chaos engineers" to implement (almost like "agile" got inflated into a stand alone industry :)). It's just a set of good practices that engineers can do to improve critical systems.

</comment><comment><USER2> Honestly I've never worked in an environment and with stack mature and scalable enough, with roles within the team so clearly divided, for chaos monkey to be of any use. Hectic deployments, "it's not my job" attitude, feature creep, and a litany of minor errors and misconfigurations were taking its place.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps if you had introduced Chaos Monkey, those other problems would have gotten solved as a solution to the Chaos (tm). :)

<comment><USER4> No. That's entirely not the way it works. Chaos Engineering works in companies with significant scale and sufficient maturity, and the purpose is to discover design or implementation failures in distributed systems before they happen during big rushes where you're hopefully making lots of profit.

If you lack sufficient maturity or you are not large enough, you will actually lose benefits if you try to implement chaos engineering. It's like teaching a toddler to use a propane torch. You just don't do it, or everything you love in the world will burn.

<comment><USER4> Self reply to realize that I shouldn't lecture my grandma on how to suck eggs.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I should have added a disclaimer with the :) at the end.

Thanks for the laugh though. Your phrasing was awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Older versions of chaos monkey didn't require spinnaker and still work perfectly fine.

Also, if you're using this, the right time to start doing it is in development, account wide. It's mildly obnoxious for devs to lose stuff like Jenkins servers and bastions, but you really quickly find single points of failure and start to engineer around it. Usually making your stuff resilient isn't that much work, but it's hard to know what you need to do until you test it.

If you're randomly terminating everything in dev and testing and staging, you should already be battle hardened by the time you get into production.

</comment><comment><USER6> I built a similar, much more generic thing, to test networks with various failure modes [0]. It creates proxies for tcp/http/APIs, and handles those streams however you want—cutoff, slow down, dropout, or DIY handlers. Everything can be configured w/JSON, routed by API endpoints, and modulated live through an admin API. Process clustering supported.

0\. [https://github.com/NHQ/netmorphic-1](https://github.com/NHQ/netmorphic-1)

</comment><comment><USER7> something that i dont think gets talked about or addressed enough are partial failures. a whole instance dying is pretty much a solved problem and i think most people are aware of it and how to deal with it. if its not addressed people are just taking their chances at this point. a server being removed is an on and off kind of thing. something sporadic latency or corrupted data can cause some surprising and unpredictable issues.

<comment><USER3> Chaos Monkey does that too. We used to have a separate monkey called Latency Monkey that induced network latency, because as you aptly point out, detecting if something is down is a lot easier than detecting if it is slow or intermittently down. Netflix has since incorporated those failure modes into chaos monkey: [https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/The-Chaos- Monkey-...](https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/The-Chaos-Monkey-Army)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is a recommended Chaos Monkey guide/method on Kubernetes iow _without_ running Spinnaker?

<comment><USER9> Here are several chaos engineering efforts that work with Kubernetes: [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=chaos- engineering&format=...](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=chaos- engineering&format=card-mode&grouping=category)</comment></comment>


Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful as Current Gen - <AUTHOR> http://au.ign.com/articles/2012/01/24/xbox-720-will-be-six-times-as-powerful-as-current-gen <comment><USER2> And the games will be 1x as fun. Here we go again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a nice win for AMD. I wonder why they chose them. They've switched in the past, NVIDIA to AMD/ATI from XBOX to the 360.

</comment><comment><USER4> Theoretically processing power "doubles" every two years by Moore's law. It better be that fast!

</comment><comment><USER5> Is that it? Smartphones evolve in 2 years as much.</comment>


Signs we're in the middle of a 6th mass extinction - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-of-6th-mass-extinction-2019-3 <comment><USER2> The end is near? If that is what it takes not not have to read one more news story about anyone named Kardashian then let it end. Though flip side is people have been predicting the end of humanity of centuries and we're still here. Just like the mice in my kitchen, I've been trapping them for thirteen years, no matter how many I kill, somehow they always make more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a sign of why another (possible cyclical) extinction event might be indicated.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/insects-dying-off-sign- of-6t...](https://www.businessinsider.com/insects-dying-off-sign-of-6th-mass- extinction-2019-2)

[..]Roughly 40% of the world's insect species are in decline, a new study said. The die-offs are happening primarily because insects are losing their habitats to farming and urbanization. The use of pesticides and fertilizers is also to blame, as is climate change. The study's authors said the repercussions of this loss of Earth's insects could be catastrophic. The rapid shrinking of insect populations is also a sign that the planet is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.[..]</comment></comment>


APL in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://ngn.github.io/apl/web/

<comment><USER2> Live Coding example showing Life in APL: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4)

I generally hate videos, but this one is well worth the few minutes it takes (assuming you are not familiar with APL; read the examples on the linked page first, it will save you a couple of reviews of the videos until you get it all)

</comment><comment><USER3> Quibble. The demo should allow use of the computer's keyboard and Alt key. Point and click with a graphical keyboard is nuts. It should support overstrike for APL's composite symbols. I did a whole lot of APL programming in the '60s and '70s at IBM and consider it IBM's bastard child. There need not have been Matlab.

I'm appalled by the authors enforcement of 1-origin indexing.

<comment><USER4> Try typing backquote followed by another character. I believe mapping alt+key in the browser might be difficult.

It's 0-origin indexing.

<comment><USER3> "Try typing backquote followed by another character."

Sorry, I don't follow?

"It's 0-origin indexing."

Oops. Then I'm ecstatic rather than appalled. :-)

<comment><USER4> "Try typing backquote followed by another character." I mean the text box at [http://ngn.github.io/apl/web/index.html](http://ngn.github.io/apl/web/index.html) If you type for instance `r in it, you will get a rho symbol, `i for iota, `a `w for alpha and omega, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those (like me) who didn't know, APL is a programming language...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_\(programming_language\))

<comment><USER6> Correction: APL is _A_ _P_ rogramming _L_ anguage.

And one so dense/obscure/efficient that obfuscation is not a contest, it's an inherent philosophy.

Edit: corrected misuse of "obtuse".

<comment><USER7> APL isn't obtuse—just unfamiliar to people who aren't familiar with it.

By the dictionary meaning of 'obtuse', in fact, APL is the opposite: a sharp tool and a masterpiece of design.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't describe it as obtuse, but I would describe it as concise.

I think that even people who are familiar with it could feel that its concision hurts readability. It's not such an unfair criticism as you may suggest.

<comment><USER9> Ken Iverson wrote an interesting document, "Notation as a tool of thought", which covers his thoughts on what a concise/efficient notation provides: [http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm](http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm)

<comment><USER8> Really, interesting, thank you!

The one worry I have with APL and its descendants is that its conciseness will encourage people to make overly long expressions.

One possibly beneficial side-effect of more verbose languages is that it tends to encourage the use of additional identifiers to hold sub-expressions. The act of naming things is often a good thing for both the authors and readers of a program. More abstractly, it allows the program to carry intentional semantics alongside operational semantics.

This is also a problem I have with mathematics -- mathematical notation often uses context-dependent single-letter variable names for semantic information, which is terrible from an outsider's perspective (and by outsider I really mean anyone who isn't working in the _exact_ field of the mathematician).

Edit: I should mention that I'm still pretty enamored with J for numerical computation, even though I never do any of it :)

<comment><USER7> If you like the Iverson, don't miss the famous piece of Whitehead's where he talks about notation too:

[http://introtologic.info/AboutLogicsite/whitehead%20Good%20N...](http://introtologic.info/AboutLogicsite/whitehead%20Good%20Notation.html)

Iverson took one of his epigraphs from there, but the whole thing is short and well worth reading.

Fun fact: Iverson, Roger Hui (the J guy) and Arthur Whitney (the K guy) were all from Alberta.

<comment><USER8> More sources for thoughts about designing descriptive but efficient language notation: brilliant! Upvotes all around! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find the GitHub project but can find nothing explaining how to install and use it. Can anyone point me in the right direction?</comment>


70M Jobs Launches Crowdfund Campaign - <AUTHOR> 70 Million Jobs, the first national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records, has just launched a crowdfund campaign (Republic.co/70-Million-Jobs). We're a YC company, have 11 million+ deserving men and women in our community, and have placed thousands in jobs with some of the country's largest employers.
It seems like only yesterday when I announced our launch here on Hacker News. It hasn't been easy--there's a great deal of negative bias felt towards those with records--but attitudes are changing fast. And record low unemployment hasn't hurt either.
We're after double bottom line returns: do massive social good and build a big, successful company. We're finding product market fit--finally, and have great plans for the future. Check out our video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qhh6IVjuMU&t=35s). I'd love your help. Thanks-Richard <comment><USER2> Post without link get a penalization here and it's more difficult that they reach the front page. It's generally better to write a blog post, or link to the crowdfunding page and add a comment here.

Also, please don't use URL shorteners like bit.ly.

<comment><AUTHOR> got it. thanks</comment></comment>


Practicing Product Minimalism - <AUTHOR> http://garry.posterous.com/practicing-product-minimalism

<comment><USER2> I've seen three big impediments to doing this in teams in a medium to large environment

\- First, there's too much ego associated with features. If a feature is someone's 'baby', it is just very hard to get them to accept that that feature needs to go. Even with all the data in the world, it becomes confrontational and ugly very easily.

\- Second, companies rarely tend to reward removing things. It is hard to have a performance review or a stack ranking/calibration meeting where your major accomplishment was removing features. This is obviously a broken performance appraisal model/culture but just happens to be prevailing culture in several large organizations.

\- Third, a lot of products and features don't lend themselves to measurement very well. Without measurements and data, deciding what to remove comes down to subjective opinions. Contrast this with new features where you often have lots of data (emails from users, tweets, market research, etc).

<comment><USER3> Yup, agree completely. But that's precisely why teams should be small.

Apple is living proof. Some large chunks of the iPhone are actually done by half a dozen engineers. When I was a PM at Microsoft, our whole team was something like 40 people on data synchronization.

<comment><USER4> teams at apple are TINY. Mail is like 3 guys. iChat is 1. Address Book is 1. iPhone apps (non web based) is like a 3 person team.

Final Cut Pro was around 15, which is still incredibly small given how big our application was.

<comment><USER5> That's not quite the case any more--those teams have gotten larger over the years (from what I've heard). That said, building the right features/product is often a lot about focus and focus is much easier to obtain with a smaller team. Apple's are definitely smaller than Microsoft's but Apple, imo, also tends to hire developers who are more considerate of or passionate of customers than Microsoft's more tech-oriented engineers.

<comment><USER4> I worked at Apple for 6 years. Believe me, the teams are still very, very small and focused. If you have a small team, you don't need to worry so much about feature creep: you don't have time to work on the less vital stuff

<comment><USER5> Yeah, should have been clearer--I do think the dev teams at Apple for the same product tend to be smaller than the equivalent team in Microsoft (just, specifically, I know that some of the teams you mentioned have grown). The small teams at Apple probably enforce all sorts of interesting functions such as not chasing half-baked features and leveraging more platform/shared code rather than Microsoft's often NIH approach to things.

Apple lets go of a number of things that Microsoft chases such as a religious concern for backwards compatibility, globalized features (not just localization but geo-specific features), and deep product extensibility with corresponding dev support. No judgment on those decisions but I'd argue that the size of MS teams isn't directly reflected in the product or features most folks consider as users of Microsoft's products and I wouldn't criticize MS based on those team sizes (as the author of this article does). Instead, I'd criticize the PMs or other managers inability to bring focus to those teams to clearly tackle the right problems at the right level of investment at the right time. It takes a lot of discipline to say "no."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One of my favorite quotes.

<comment><USER7> This is an often used misquotation. Her is the original passage with context from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's _Wind, Sand and Stars_ (1967):

And now, having spoken of the men born of the pilot's craft, I shall say something about the tool with which they work, the airplane. Have you ever looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane, but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. _In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness._

<comment><USER8> Color me simple, but I honestly don't see how that's dramatically different from the parent's "misquote".

<comment><USER9> ...especially considering that it's being translated from French. The exact wording varies by translator and is therefore irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At one stage I was very into metrics and this was one of the more interesting aspects. As a very general rule, removing features basically amounted to the same effort as adding them (i.e. a feature that takes 5 weeks, generally took 5 weeks to remove).

However, the payback in testing and regression was usually a no-brainer. You could make back your investment in removing something in 1-3 product cycles...

Somewhat contrary to what you'd expect, this was often a better payback than adding features - of course you could take this to a variety of absurd conclusions... However, what it generally meant is that in most situations products will tend towards "feature bloat".

</comment><comment><USER11> Removing features is very hard when there is always some paying customer is using that feature.

<comment><USER12> A feature is just an indirection for getting something done. There are often better / newer ways of getting that same thing done, sometimes part of a bigger flow context. So the "feature" is a tidbit that can be removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone very familiar with the PM process at Microsoft--I don't totally agree with the conclusion. PMs can be incredibly valuable to a team and are, in a different way, a creator/do-er. Unfortunately, most PMs construct obstacles and walls rather than bring focus and help a development team navigate their direction.

Also, one thing I see a lot of PMs who follow the "minimalist" approach confuse is that the idea isn't really to remove features to strip the product down to it's bare capabilities in the name of minimalism or elegance (while not a bad exercise, can make certain types of differentiation challenging in a competitive space). Instead, it's about good design and delivering quality on the core user scenarios rather than allowing yourself to stray to "it'd be cool to do this" without fulling thinking through the needs of your users, the resulting user experience, and the dilution of effort on your dev and QA team by chasing those edge scenarios. It's that lack of focus and discipline that ultimately leads to features that need to be removed.

</comment><comment><USER13> When launching a new product it is very safe to cut down the functionalities to the absolute necessary features. If not you may end up finding that users actually need feature x to behave differently. Sometimes changing that single feature means changing 3 other features or the application will be flawed.</comment>


What's the harm? - <AUTHOR> http://whatstheharm.net/index.html <comment><USER2> >Breatharianism

I recall a recent story of a breatharian guru-type who was exposed as a fraud. I understand why people fall victim to believing this stuff, but I'm still shocked when I read about any of these weirdos that have a following.</comment>


China Surpasses Japan to Become World's 2nd Richest Nation - <AUTHOR> http://www.chinasmack.com/2015/stories/china-surpasses-japan-to-become-worlds-2nd-richest-nation.html <comment><USER2> They have surpassed Japan since 5 years ago</comment>


Ask HN: I'm considering selling my mobile app. from my site, any toughts? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering selling my mobile applications from my site as alternative, for users without credit cards, any toughts? I also have some concerns about Piracy, care to share your experince with piracy, how to do you deal with it? <comment> mike-cardwell If it is good it will be pirated regardless of how you sell it. Anyone with a jailbroken Android phone can access and distribute the unprotected package after downloading it from the Android Marketplace.

Lots of people still pay for software though. It's more convenient.

Might be a good idea to offer a free crippled version through the Android market place if possible and then advertise your paid version from that one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a great idea, I will use this approach for my next app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> if you have created something that people will go out of their way to pirate, congratulations. Piracy should be the least of your concerns. Focus on getting as many users as possible.</comment>


Async Fragments: Rediscovering Progressive HTML Rendering - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebaytechblog.com/2014/12/08/async-fragments-rediscovering-progressive-html-rendering-with-marko/ <comment><USER2> A similar technique (albeit a poor-mans version) that I use when I have an expensive bit of HTML to render is to load a div after the initial page has completely rendered, using intercooler.js:

[http://intercoolerjs.org/examples/lazyload.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/examples/lazyload.html)

You can throw an indicator in there too, to let users know what is going on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gee, this would all go away if they would let the browser _render the damn website_ instead of layering _everything_ behind Javascript.

You can load all the garbage you want with Javscript after the content is rendered and _nobody will care_.</comment>


Civil rights groups call for 'pause' on Facebook ads - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/126dffbb05b92c79642008b8426e1826 <comment><AUTHOR> it appears the North Face is the biggest/first major brand to pull out:

[https://twitter.com/thenorthface/status/1273985578564870145](https://twitter.com/thenorthface/status/1273985578564870145)</comment>


CPUBoss – Compare CPUs to See Which Is Faster - <AUTHOR> http://cpuboss.com <comment><USER2> I use CPU Boss and CPUBenchmark.net to compare CPUs. It's especially handy when you're comparing newer and older processors. Often, a newer "Pentium" processor using better fab can outperform an i5 from just a couple years ago. So, that great deal on an i5 laptop advertised in deals of the week email you got may not be such a great deal.</comment>


The Symptoms of Low Internal Software Quality - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2014/06/the-symptoms-of-low-internal-software-quality/

<comment><USER2> Full rewrites are dangerous, especially if you insist that the new software is going to match all of the features of the old software.

In particular, if you have some old software that has been in production a long time, you will probably find out that it is doing things that you don't know it is doing.

Refactoring is usually the way to go. Often a small amount of effort can address many of the worst pain points.</comment>


Advice from HN: I'm about to be fired because I declared prior IP months ago. - <AUTHOR>

Quick backstory: I'm very interested in a particular niche of the tech sector. I studied it in school. Did research on it. Have a very promising (but unlaunched) side-project in the field.
I'm also recently employed by a prominent company in the field. Talking about my experience in the field is what got me the job.
Several months ago, when I signed on, I got the standard "list your prior IP" form. I listed my side-project IP. I got the "I'll have to clear this with some people..." response from HR, then heard nothing. 3+ months pass, until this week. Seems we have a problem.
From what I've heard, there are two issues:
1. Due diligence of an acquiring company would find the simple act of me having this IP "too risky." IDK why, as I'm not claiming any of the company IP and the contract stipulates that if I inject my IP into their business they are granted a perpetual non-exclusive license. Seems fine to me to simply list it.
2. If I were to develop this product, it could theoretically compete with the company's product. It would only do this under the broadest sense of the field we're in. I can kind of understand this. They are still worried though, regardless of if I actually develop the product, that my simply having the IP makes this too risky. Seems as if they WILL NOT have me with the IP listed, regardless of non-compete clauses or whatever.
So, my options or potential outcomes as I see them:
Don't list my prior IP on the paper, keep my job. (This isn't the company's stance, but I assume I would retain claim to the IP via my papertrail of work from well before I started the job if I really need to prove it eventually).
List the prior IP, they "don't hire me" (despite me having worked there for months) and I'm de facto fired/quit.
List the IP, pitch them in the meeting, and have them acquire the IP. Work for the company to develop the product. (This would be an extremely unlikely scenario, don't even want to think about terms right now).
Somehow convince them that the product is far enough away from their product that it isn't a conflict. It sounds as if this will be unlikely as well.
Eff, this sucks. How do any companies expect to acquire domain experts without some prior IP baggage they've picked up along the way?
Someone talk me through it. Like I said, I love the field. I love the company. I love my side-project. Can't I just keep doing it all? :( <comment><USER2> best solution is to create a holding firm. sell your IP to the firm. The firm now owns your IP. You no long have prior-ip issues.

Your lawyers will show you how to do this nice and legal.

good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> You really need to consult two lawyers, one who specializes in labor law and another who specializes in intellectual property law. In this case you may want high profile lawyers to demonstrate your degree of concern. If you are fired over this issue, you may have some recourse. BTW, I am not a lawyer and so I am not licensed to give legal advice. (include <standard.disclaimer>)

I would suggest that you put together a moderately short memorandum of the facts. You will need a time line, dates and names of attendees of meetings, summaries of what happened at each meeting and what happened. If you keep an appointments diary, copy out the relevant pages. Collect copies of all the employment documents. This will save time and money if you need to go forward. In the future, when you have a meeting with anyone involving this, write a memorandum to the file recounting exactly what happened with quotations, agreements, action items, etc. Keep everything factual and avoid editorial content and presumptions of intent.

Check your employment and intellectual property agreements. I suspect that your employer does not have approval rights on your excluded intellectual property declaration. The purpose of that declaration is to make the company's job simpler--they claim to own everything you did not exclude--and since it describes your intellectual property prior to the point of employment, they have no say in its content, you own what you own. I can imagine a situation where the company might ask for a clarification of what you are excluding, but they really have no right to challenge the substance. Moreover, I further suspect that the fact that they did not come back to you in a timely fashion and that they went ahead and employed you immediately would be interpreted as _ipso facto_ agreement that the declaration was an adequate description of your excluded intellectual property.

</comment><comment><USER4> I strongly suggest you speak to an attorney.

<comment><USER5> I don't mean to be flippant, but why? Best case scenario (as I see it), the lawyer says they have no case and they can neither fire you, nor take your IP. Which leaves you working for a company that doesn't want you working for them. Which, to me, equals quiting or being fired in the short or medium term.

Worst case, you quit, are fired, or sell them your project.

I think you should see if they'll buy your project, and if not quit or be fired.

I'd go to a lawyer if they tried to claim ownership of your project, which they don't seem to be doing.

Of course, IANAL, and neither is my parent, which may answer my question of "why?"

<comment><USER6> Because the OP may be able to sell/option/contract his IP, and that needs to be done properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't entirely understand. You've already filled out the prior IP form, right? I take it they're asking you to fill out a new one? But you have your copy of the original one that they signed, don't you?

IANAL, but I think you should just quit. This is not ethical behavior on their part. If you go along with what they're asking, you're essentially abandoning your IP rights, in exchange for nothing but continued employment. I wouldn't want to work anywhere that even asked me to do that.

Yes you can and should consult an attorney, but if the situation turns adversarial, you might as well quit.

IP-related conflicts of interest are a real problem for anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations who nonetheless needs to take a traditional employment position. I think the best policy is to avoid working for companies whose businesses have much overlap with one's own plans (I have done this on occasion myself).

Yes, that probably means taking a less interesting job, possibly even making less money, while you work on your project on the side.

The suggestion someone made to sell your IP to a holding firm is a very interesting one, but I don't understand the implications. That company will somehow need to defend its IP rights at some point -- at least, the way this is going, that outcome seems likely -- and I don't know how it's going to do that, unless you can get a patent filed in a couple of weeks. Even then, to litigate a patent you need money.

It's more than possible I'm missing something, so maybe you should look into that option, but my initial reaction is not too optimistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The issue is that _I_ signed the prior IP form months ago. They didn't, HR sent it off to be reviewed or whatever, and they're just now getting back to me. Months after I started working there.

Thus, I don't know what happens when they now say "we can't approve that." Is it still a 'condition of employment' that I sign it? Even if they gave me the job without themselves signing it? Can they just "not hire me" or would they have to fire me or would I quit or....

<comment><USER7> Again, you should run this by an attorney, but here's my reaction.

You have put your IP at risk by starting work without receiving a signed copy of the prior IP form. Yes, you were going on the assumption that everything would be okay, but in a situation where you know you have IP that overlaps theirs, that was naive.

I still think you should quit. For one thing, if you continue to work knowing that they're not accepting your prior IP declaration, you are tacitly accepting their non-acceptance, a point that could work against you if this went to court. But beyond that, the only leverage you have in this situation is the value of the work you're doing for them. If you continue to work, you're giving them what they want without appropriate compensation. If you want to negotiate a licensing arrangement for your IP, you'll never do it while you're an employee; the only hope is to make it a condition of your return.

Don't take this advice without running it by an attorney, but that's what I think. (It's possible, for example, that instead of quitting outright you should simply refuse to sign any other prior IP form, and let them fire you. But I would always rather be able to tell my next employer that I quit, rather than try to explain why I was fired.)

Here's another consideration. They've as much as told you that they're trying to get acquired. You don't know who the acquirer will be or what kind of management they will have. Whatever difficulty you are having getting your IP rights recognized now will be squared in that situation.

BTW, if money is tight for you, you should _immediately_ start looking for another job -- one that won't have this kind of problem. This advice you should take in any case, because looking is free and has no downside. If you can find something else quickly, you'll be in a much better position to negotiate with your current employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel for you. One of my perceived barriers to my on-the-side startup idea is this very thing.

If you get to fill in the form again, declare yourself as a director of the company /you will form/ to hold your IP. That's all, do NOT list the IP. The IP baggage is then not with you, per se, but with the Ltd company you created.

Sounds like my perfect nightmare, I hope this resolves itself!

</comment><comment><USER9> does not the employer have a problem here, perhaps more so then yours. After all without clearance their IP is tainted from a purchasers POV. And you did declare it before you were hired. That they did not do the due diligence _BEFORE_ an offer is made, and accepted, could really cause problems for them. You should really talk to a employment Lawyer, your position may be much better then you think it is.

good luck</comment>


Show HN: Tamber | Always Have An Awesome Concert To Go See - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAoSiwpaoW4

<comment><USER2> While I couldn't imagine anyone other than hipsters holding the phone, the video was actually really well made and simple, and it definitely introduced your product to me (I sat through the whole thing). Looks pretty awesome.</comment>


Goodbye Big Five: Google - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500 <comment><USER2> > "Your smart home pings Google at the same time every hour in order to > determine whether or not it's connected to the internet," Dhruv tells me. > "Which is funny to me because these devices' engineers decided to determine > connectivity to the entire internet based on the uptime of a single company. > It's a good metaphor for how far the internet has strayed from its original > promise to decentralize control."

The alternative is effectively DDoSing random websites from 100 million devices, which is definitively an uncool move.

<comment><USER3> Not really. It can ping whatever resource it needs "the internet" for in the first place. After all, if that's down, then no amount of "internet" connectivity will help.

I put "internet" in quotes because it's not really a well-formed concept. How much of the global network needs to be accessible to count as "internet access"? Your home LAN? Your country? A specific server in Larry Page's basement?

<comment><USER4> When it's connecting to a wifi access point your phone or device doesn't know what resource you'll actually request so instead it pings the most resilient thing a Google engineer could think of at the time without risking DDoSing someone which is Google.

<comment><USER5> We are talking about smart home things here though, which usually depend on their own services anyway.

This is more of a problem with things like Windows reaching out to msftconnecttest.com or some other generic internet service. But in the case of a smart home device it's needs are usually more well defined.

This becomes harder with a consumer router trying to determine if it is online though unfortunately because of exactly what you describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am the only person on Earth, I think, that has had 0 problems with Apple Maps (at least, in the past year). I have never aimed for Cleveland and ended up in the Atlantic; and I've never been late or gotten lost. I think I've disagreed with its shortcuts once or twice.

Not denying your bad Apple Maps experience - just, I have no idea why mine is so trouble-free _because_ so many have bad ones.

(For calibration, I live in NoVA)

<comment><USER7> You might be!

Occasionally I'll rent a car that only has Apple's Car Play and have to use my work iPhone to navigate (gawd forbid Apple would let us use Google Maps on Car Play;).

My experience has been universally poor:

\- it provides no instructions for major actual intersections. It thinks you're staying on same main road even when there's a confusing Y in front of the driver. I have constant moments of panic when I see the intersection coming and no help from the maps.

\- It provides confusing instructions on straight roads ("Turn right in 100 meters" when there's a stretch of straight road)

\- It'll reference names for a road that are nowhere near what any of the signs indicate

\- "Keep in right three lanes to stay on the road" \- when the rightmost lane is actually a turning lane

\- Something that is admittedly tricky, it struggles to provide useful instructions on more than four-way roads (e.g. if it's a 5-way or 6-way, "Turn right" has multiple interpretations). It doesn't use, at least not in my cases "bear right" or "slight right" or similar vs "turn right" or "acute right" or "sharp right" \- and again, it gets the road names wrong.

\- When Searching:

* it'll show me Bedford England 5000km away, but not Bedford NS 12km away

* It has some weird internal naming so searching for actual address will again not lead me anywhere near to what I want

Basically it's been a constant source of frustration beyond what I believe could reasonably be attributed to my inexperience with its UI :-/

EDIT/UPDATE: Thx for feedback; my work phone is on iOS 11, good to know that (*recently, after 4 years without it) CarPlay now supports other maps; note that I don't think it in any way makes Apple Maps experience itself any better 0:-)

<comment><USER8> FYI CarPlay supports third party maps like Google as of September. [https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/17875256/apple- ios-12-car...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/17875256/apple- ios-12-carplay-google-maps-waze-support-third-party-navigation)

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I heard that might be coming, I'll check if there's an update waiting on my work phone :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite the tirade of anti-facebook/google/amazon blogs and posts in the last 5 years, I'm still not convinced that "being tracked" in my day-to-day life is a negative thing. I still don't perceive that my privacy is lost when I use those services. That information is shared with companies who use the data more-or-less responsibly with respect to my life.

Personally I prefer having a majority of my internet experience centralized in one place. Calendar, Email, files, maps, news, search, entertainment, etc. This saves a lot of time and effort in my life. Is it worth it?

<comment><USER10> My only fear with having everything centralized is that Google can decide you did something wrong and cut you out of so many important things in your life, without recourse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989146) is just one example I found with minimal searching.

<comment><USER11> You might also enjoy Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled": [https://craphound.com/scroogled.html](https://craphound.com/scroogled.html)

Though for whatever reason the formatting on that appears terrible (to me in my uMatrix locked down Firefox)

<comment><USER12> I had a nice umatrix config saved to the cloud but it got deleted somewhere in the last one year (I had to temporarily switch to chrome). Did that happen to you too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > There's no way I can delete my Gmail accounts completely as I did with > Facebook. First off, it would be a huge security mistake; freeing up my > email address for someone else to claim is just asking to be hacked.

Does Google really free up your email address for re-allocation when you delete your account? I do recall that was in issue at one point with Yahoo Mail. No email provider should allow the reassignment of previously used email addresses for precisely this reason.

<comment><USER14> I believe Google never garbage collects deleted @gmail.com usernames.

According to [0]: "Your Gmail address can't be used by anyone else in the future."

[0] [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=238...](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/61177?hl=en&topic=2382753&ctx=topic)

<comment><USER15> This used to be possible. I know because I once deleted my email and then realized I missed something I needed to transfer, so just re-created my email again to receive that email.

<comment><USER14> How long between deleted and re-opening? The support page I linked talks about being able to restore a deleted account within some period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great experiment. It really shows how badly we are dependent on Google. Everything relies on it, seems like it would be best if it was regulated as a public utility, enjoying monopoly but also having to serve the public good also when it doesn't necessarily align with its commercial interest (like in EU energy companies have to give you a link to the grid).

It also shows that it doesn't have real competitors, being so broad in scope and having all that data before others did.

<comment><USER17> Part of the challenge there is it's bigger than a public utility.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the US nationalizes it. That leaves EU, Australian, Canadian, &c Google customers out in the cold---it's unlikely either the US or those other countries will be comfortable with continued service by a national utility to customers outside that nation. Perhaps some kind of subsidiary model could be constructed, but the details of how are non- trivial.

<comment><USER16> We could make it more like NATO?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've pretty much run in that mode for years. No big problems. With Ghostery and Privacy Badger turned up to high, and third party cookies blocked, Google doesn't get much through. My phone, a ruggedized Android model from Caterpillar Tractor, has no Google apps other than the Google Play Services middleware. I've never had Facebook on a phone.

Mail is on Thunderbird and an IMAP server at an ISP. My email address is on my own domain. If I want to make something available to others, I put it on Github, or an "outgoing" directory on my web site. Documents are edited with LibreOffice. Browsing is with Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on the phone. A few sites don't load properly, but they're marginal ones for which there are better alternatives. More often, the site loads but the ads don't, which is nice. I don't see many ads.

It's just easier this way. The junk level is way down.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think we as a community need to embrace a more holistic approach to the problem of privacy.

It's great that some of us can protect privacy by going crazy on each channel that leaks our personal data. But the remaining >7B people on the planet will still leak a lot of personal details, undermining their authority over their choices. If the data creep continues we'll one day find ourselves in a dystopia, and we'll be the people to blame. Much like the 2008 crisis is the fault of bankers because it was easiest for them to figure out that the human project is headed towards suffering.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a whole series. She already did Amazon and Facebook:

[https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big-five](https://gizmodo.com/c/goodbye-big- five)

<comment><USER21> The Facebook one is weird. There are some strange thought processes going though her head, which she kinda acknowledges. Stuff like:

> I have to admit that the enjoyment of a holiday dedicated to dressing up is > somewhat degraded when not using Facebook's apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Worth noting that by blocking all Google IPs, the author is not only cutting out Google services, but also any other application that relies on Google services. For example, there's a bit in there about not being able to use Dropbox because it uses Captcha.

<comment><USER23> Google fonts are used by all websites. And from Referrer header, Google has your browsing history.

<comment><USER24> Google font logs are not dumped into their analytics and they take a number of steps that greatly reduce requests made for fonts in the first place.

[https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...](https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users)

<comment><USER23> There is no mention of which browser they refer to. I don't use Chrome, and I see requests to fonts on every website. And requests do contain Referer (what I browse) and, of course, my IP.

And in Private browsing, no caches should be saved anyway.

<comment><USER24> They're not referring to what browsers do, they're referring to the Response Headers they return with the resources, e.g. the max-age for the CSS files is one day, the max-age for the fonts files is one year.

> And in Private browsing, no caches should be saved anyway.

That's one of the trade-offs the user is choosing to make and one of the reasons why those that use Private browsing at all, use it selectively. I believe Private browsing will not re-download web fonts if the browser has already cached them in a non-private window but that's a performance and bandwidth distinction, the CSS request will still be made.

The page explicitly states that they use Google Fonts log data in aggregate to show font popularity, that's it. They don't set a cookie and request headers and ips are relatively poor identifiers for individuals. I don't think they use Google Fonts to track one's browsing habits, you're free think that I'm insufficiently paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For maps, I'd add Here ([https://wego.here.com/](https://wego.here.com/)) to the Apple Maps and Mapquest options she chose. It's the mapping solution that Microsoft got from Nokia, and is used by a lot of in-car navigation systems IIRC.

It suffers by comparison to Google Maps mostly in the lack of integration with the full database of businesses/reviews/etc. though I think it probably has most of the business listings. I suspect its traffic info is weaker as well, though I haven't really checked.

</comment><comment><USER25> I get the world's Google dependency. I really do. I tried most of their mainstream services myself and they were indeed as good as I'd been told. But they're online only. And their Office apps tank next to Microsoft Office. And nothing I've seen matches the utility of Outlook. Besides, the prospect of transferring all my meticulously collected birthdays from Outlook to Gmail didn't float my boat at all. In the 00's I eventually switched from IE to Firefox, and have never tried Chrome.

One employer used Gmail, and I happily used it whilst employed there, but that didn't do nearly enough to change my mind.

And so I never did buy into Google like the linked article describes. To this day I cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd trust my world to a single vendor, in a single location.

It's no surprise that the non-technical great unwashed don't think this way, but it surprises me that technically literate and able people do not care for reducing or eliminating the risk posed by depending on a single vendor for... everything.

Especially given what we know about Google.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am guessing that if she has already dropped Microsoft that is why she can't use Bing maps. Not as ubiquitous as Google Maps, or as featured as even Apple maps, but still ahead of Mapquest :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> > I create new email addresses on Protonmail and Riseup.net (for work and > personal email, respectively) [..]

I wouldn't do that. Riseup is providing email on a very tight budget. They are activists and every free account they give out is using some precious resources. Unless you really need it for specific purposes I believe it's better to go to fastmail or protonmail for "general purposes" email needs.

</comment><comment><USER28> A lot of commenters in here are saying "oh yeah, I've done something similar, not that hard/different." What they're glossing over is how the author also blocked all Google IPs, meaning that Google Cloud Platform is no longer available, along with assorted services. This means authentication like captchas, anything that uses maps besides Google's own offering (Lyft, Uber, Yelp, etc), and photos being hosted on their version of AWS S3 is included.

There is a ton of web and data infrastructure being hosted/ran by Microsoft, Google, and Amazon that we often don't think about. The only big service provider I can think of besides those three is Digital Ocean, and it's not a 1:1 comparison, since they're more like infrastructure.

*edit: Basically, if you find Amazon so abhorrent that you want to cut them out of your life, you can't unless you eschew huge swathes of the internet. Which might work for you. But think about that: they own the digital land under our feet.

<comment><USER29> jQuery foundation, nobody thinks about how much they might know about you...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've taken similar steps, though have not gone so far as to set up a vpn block to all google ips. I do have as much fingerprinting and privacy protection as possible enabled in Firefox though. I find the worst experience is captcha, it will no longer give me free passes and I regularly have to sit there for several minutes providing training data that they reject. It's to the point where I just avoid sites that require it. Newegg is a particularly egregious offender as they seem to require a very high degree of certainty.

<comment><USER31> What set up are you using in Firefox for fingerprint and privacy protection?

<comment><USER30> Extensions: uBlock, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, DDG Privacy Essentials, HTTPS Everywhere, and most importantly Containers

I try to keep as many sites as possible into relevant containers. Facebook and Google get their own containers just for them (there are additional addons which will handle this for you as getting all of Google siloed off is cumbersome otherwise).

I also make use of the built in tracker blocking, blocking all third party cookie use entirely. There's also an option to resist fingerprinting that I enable, which does a ton of things [1]

[1]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is trading Google cloud products for Apple cloud products really such a big change? I could see the truly privacy paranoid running away from all cloud services and running their own everything, but just switching cloud providers doesn't seem like a meaningful difference to me. OK, so now Apple has all of your data instead of Google. Either way it's in the hands of a big corporation, and by extension, the government.

<comment><USER33> Google's core business is advertising, while Apple's core business is hardware. One has a much greater incentive to collect, store, and exploit users' data.

<comment><USER34> and yet Apple comes up with some of the biggest privacy blunders in their offerings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So much of this is overblown... and I say this as someone who goes out of their way to avoid using Amazon/Google/etc for privacy reasons.

The biggest problem with debating privacy and security these days is the sheer paranoia running rampant from people who don't understand the workings behind the scenes, coupled with the people behind the scenes assuming defensive tones from the get-go whenever stuff is brought up.

</comment><comment><USER36> For maps, I use HERE maps on Android and it works great. Offline capability is particularly good. I am not sure if it is available on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER37> ... except that Google still has most of my emails as people who send me them or whom I send to are using Gmail...

<comment><USER38> This. Same with Facebook. Even if I choose to not use a particular service, these services still know about me because so many other people I interact with do use these services. I get that as a Gmail user, you've agreed to allow them to read emails for whatever they choose. However, I did not. If I hit reply to a Gmail account, I'm not agreeing to the ToS. Just because I visit a site that has chosen to use G*/FB does not mean that I agree to the ToS. A website's cookie notices give me the option to leave if I don't agree, but by then, all of the tracking has already started without my agreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This non-tech person's attempt looks to me is futile, just switching from Google to Apple or other companies doesn't mean you won't be tracked. To me the best solution will be self-hosting cloud services for email, calendar, and using TomTom or Garmin GPS.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone know why she chose RiseUp.net for personal email?

</comment><comment><USER41> I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self-inflicted and/or over-dramatized. Most privacy-conscious folks have been saying from day one that smartphones and smart-homes are a bad idea in that regard. Dumb- phones exist. Printing directions out is ... not that hard. Etc.

Overall, though, I am glad this is becoming more of a thing in terms of mass appeal. Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way to a greater awareness of shiny-new-tech-that-comes-with-strings.

<comment><USER42> > I feel like this comes from a good place, but a lot of it seems self- > inflicted and/or over-dramatized.

Agreed, and too absolutist. You can take a reasonable stance without upending your life. So you can't get away from maps integration in apps, that's ok, still using the competition helps. Same with browser choice and others. I can decry all the plastic waste and still type on a keyboard with plastic parts.

<comment><USER43> Taking an absolutist stance is the point of the authors experiment. You wouldn't do this in practice if you were just trying to improve your privacy, but in an experiment to see just how far Google's reach extends it makes sense to block _everything_ and see what unexpected 3rd party services also fail - such as Uber or Dropbox

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Next up: Microsoft.

That will be pretty easy. Only thing I used of Microsoft website for is to get .NET for a one-off project that required it.

<comment><USER45> And you never use GitHub either?

Don't forget: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

<comment><USER24> Yes, and that will include static sites hosted on GitHub Pages.

Avoiding Microsoft is often a problem when exchange documents with someone and the files don't work well with whatever not-Office you choose (Apple Page/Numbers/Keynote, LibreOffice, etc.).

I wonder if they can even attempt to block receiving or placing phone calls from/to a number with Skype on the other end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why the title was changed from article's one? Mods?

</comment><comment><USER46> Turn off internet. Would be much easier xD</comment>


Show HN: Page-watch – visual webpage monitoring, made simple - <AUTHOR> https://page-watch.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN - this is a side project of mine that I completed between jobs. It scratches a specific itch of my own which is to be able to keep track of visual page differences in an RSS feed. I would love to hear any feedback on the UI and design.

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea. The Apple example of the subtle arrow change is a great thing to be able to see.

Couple of bits of immediate feedback: the navigation breaks the forward/back button (it has no effect) and the lower Reddit examples highlight the footer changing where it doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sigh - I just realized that and I'm one of those people who hate it when sites break the back button :( What's happening on reddit which is that since it's just a very simple pixel difference when the content shifts down everything reports changed. It's probably a bad site for the current implementation. Some others like [https://page-watch.com/#/i/AWd](https://page-watch.com/#/i/AWd) is probably a better example.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Way to Spend Bad Days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@maartenvandoorn/the-best-way-to-spend-really-bad-days-5d2e3e3be897 <comment><USER2> When I was in the army I remember my team mate always telling me 'After every bitter night comes a sweet sunrise'

Everyone have bad days, Find what makes you feel good

\- Go for a walk \- Get a drink in your favorite bar \- Play some computer games (When I play DOTA I forget everything to be honest)

</comment><comment><USER3> before dozing after 1 AM

Not to be overly dismissive, but sounds like the guy needs better sleep habits. My mood is weakened by one day of bad sleep, but oh my, if I get two bad sleep nights in a row, my mood is atrocious.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a typical hour to go to bed and get plenty of good sleep to me.

Only after 3-4 AM it becomes hard for me to get high quality sleep, because waking up after 11-12 AM means waking up to lots of noises from outside the window - but that highly depends on where you live (I have a playground and kindergarden near on the bedroom side, so that's probably an extreme case). It also means trying to sleep when birds become loud, although some people may actually like that.</comment></comment>


The Scale of Programming Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/the-scale-of-programming-complexity

<comment><USER2> I will put the complexity of developing a reasonably complex native smart phone application wth backend a little above that of developing a website with similar backend business logic. There is also system programming like - avionics, telecom switching and routing, medical imaging etc. which requires high degree of learning, education and proficiency.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like this. Just two things, though:

2D game programming too low and basic dynamic websites too high.

For example, I know a lot of people who could churn out simple mobile apps or basic dynamic websites in their sleep but would get slowed down by basic game design.

</comment><comment><USER4> Everything about programming is easy when you break it down into parts. I think good programing is about the ability to learn new domains, abstract thinking skills, a good design sense(for architecting code and user interaction/interfaces), and a healthy dose of patience for debugging. I wouldn't generalize too much about specific domains because they each come with their own unique challenges.

</comment><comment><USER5> rank (n) * 8: formal verification of technology of rank _n_

<comment><USER6> Scientific codes are much harder to verify formally than programming language implementations. Even getting an informal error bound is virtually impossible in most cases. Formally verifying e.g. web applications is also incredibly hard, but in other ways: (1) it's hard or impossible to formally specify in a non-trivial way (2) the implementation depends on a huge amount of code that needs to be verified or at least specified (OS, compiler, network, etc.).

In fact in this list, the most difficult things are the easiest to formally verify: programming language implementations, network stack, OS, filesystems, algorithms, etc.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The more difficult on that list, the more formal the system, and the more automated tools that have been developed to automate verification.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX loses another Starship prototype in explosion - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274931/spacex-starship-prototype-rocket-explosion-static-fire-test <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why they are trying to tie an experimental engine test so tightly with the crew launch. I know the two events are temporally close to each other but seems a bit alarmist to start the article attempting to connect the two. They do continue to say they are unrelated but why even bother bringing up the crew launch at all?

I'm sort of surprised they went ahead with the Starship test, assuming they knew it had a likelihood of failure, given the temporal proximity to demo-2 and the inevitable bad press if the Starship test ended in an explosion.</comment>


Jim Keller Joins Intel to Lead Silicon Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/jim-keller-joins-intel-lead-silicon-engineering/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928975).

<comment><AUTHOR> IMO these two are different and not a dupe. That article (and discussion) is about Tesla while in this one the real news is Jim Keller joining Intel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Man this guys career should be exhibit #1 when asking if Non compete clauses should be valid. I mean, he's worked for most of hte big names in silicon design during his career.

Imagine if he was stopped from moving from DEC to AMD early in his career?

From Wikipedia.....

> Jim Keller worked at DEC until 1998, where he was involved in designing the > Alpha 21164 and 21264 processors.

> In 1998 he moved to AMD, where he worked to launch the AMD Athlon (K7) > processor and was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture,[17] > which also included designing the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport > interconnect mainly used for multiprocessor communications.

> In 1999, he left AMD to work at SiByte to design MIPS-based processors for 1 > Gbit/s network interfaces and other devices. In November 2000, SiByte was > acquired by Broadcom,[19] where he continued as chief architect[9] until > 2004.[3]

> In 2004 he moved to serve as the Vice President of Engineering at P.A. > Semi,[3][11] a company specializing in low-power mobile processors.[4] P.A. > Semi was acquired by Apple in 2008, and Keller followed,[6][17] becoming > part of a team to design the Apple A4 and A5 system-on-a-chip mobile > processors. These processors were used in several Apple products, including > iPhone 4, 4S, iPad and iPad 2.

> In August 2012, Jim Keller returned to AMD, where his primary task was to > design a new generation microarchitecture[5][11][15] called Zen.[14] After > years of being unable to compete with Intel in the high-end CPU market, the > new generation of Zen processors is hoped to restore AMD's position in the > high-end x86-64 processor market.[3][13] On September 18, 2015, Keller > departed from AMD to pursue other opportunities, ending his three-year > employment at AMD.[20]

> In January 2016, Keller joined Tesla, Inc. as Vice President of Autopilot > Hardware Engineering.[1]

> In April 2018, Keller joined Intel.

<comment><USER4> I think the problem is that the vast majority of non-competes just end up preventing people from making reasonable decisions with their careers. There are people like Keller where is would seem that some form on non-compete should exist (considering he's come to be known as an invaluable employee), but the vast majority of employees (regardless of what they'd like to think) don't pose some kind of existential threat to the company as sharing trade secrets and intellectual property has nothing to do with non-compete. Non- competes seem to just get used to prevent employees from seeking out (or being sought out by) a better job if their current one doesn't suit them.

One example of an overzealous non-compete I saw when I lived in Alabama (a place with practically zero restrictions on the scope or duration of non- compete agreements) was that of a close friend's mom. She was a telecom tech working for Bellsouth when AT&T bought them out in early 2007. Most of the local employees got laid off and at least she had a non-compete contract saying she couldn't work in anything related to telecom for two years in the geographic region - and it was valid whether you quit, got fired, or got laid off.

I tend to be of the opinion where if the loss of an individual poses an existential risk to a company, the company should do everything they can to make sure that person wants to stay. I'd also consider it a failing of a company if a single individual gained that much singular importance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating that Keller was essentially brought in to stop gap Tesla's loss / end of relationship with Mobileye who previously supplied the EyeQ3 chipset that was the core of Tesla's autopilot.

At the time speculation was the CEO of Mobileye was uncomfortable in how Tesla pushed the limits of autopilot marketing and use (1) - they had always defined EyeQ3 as a "eyes on" technology (2).

And then last year Intel paid ~$15b to buy out mobileye (3) which gave them an immediate and broad entry into one of the most exciting chipset markets.

Keller moving over to Intel with the resources of mobileye, and a vision forged from executing Tesla's own efforts seems like a considerable coup for Intel.

(1) [https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobileye-ends-partnership- with-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobileye-ends-partnership-with- tesla-1469544028)

(2) [https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/evolution-eyeq- chip/](https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/evolution-eyeq-chip/)

(3) [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/13/reports-intel-buying- mobil...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/13/reports-intel-buying-mobileye-for- up-to-16b-to-expand-in-self-driving-tech/)

<comment><USER6> It doesn't appear that he'll be working on that, MobilEye is an "Intel company" an autonomous (pun intended) subsidiary not a division of Intel, they don't even manufacture their chips at Intel fabs.

JK is joining Intel proper looks like he'll be working on SoC design.

I'm also not sure if the analysis that JK was there to bridge the gap was correct they've bridged that gap with NVIDIA in fact they've already switched to NVIDIA before the fallout with MobilEye which is likely the main reason why MobilEye didn't took it quietly since they were already sleeping in separate beds.

The rumor was always that JK was joined Tesla to design and build their own AI SoC and doesn't look like it panned out, hopefully for the better I don't think Tesla should add ASIC design and manufacturing to their list of "achievements".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dude's in his 50s and has been at the helm developing great products that have pushed the limit of what microprocessors can do. I wish these companies would allow more blog-style posts of how they overcome difficult problems; but Intel's notorious about disclosing what goes on behind the curtains as we've seen with Spectre+Meltdown. Makes you wonder how much further along we could be in this space if NDAs allowed people talk more about what they've done after leaving their previous company/companies.

</comment><comment><USER8> very curious if anyone has info on what he will be working on if it's any specific chip family. mainline x86 ? GEN gpus ? phis ? something else ?</comment>