Serverless Security: What's Left to Protect? - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/articles/serverless-security <comment><USER2> > However, managing granular permissions for hundreds or thousands of > functions is very hard to do.

When building a FaaS app from scratch granular permissions are manageable. Functions are small, so it's easy to reason about the capabilities they need and write tight policies.

I don't see why this doesn't scale to a larger FaaS app.

I think the real trick is to avoid the bundling of functions and policies the article suggests people do out of convenience.

I'm working on a practical guide to Lambda and IAM policies here:

[https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas/blob/master/docs/per- func...](https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas/blob/master/docs/per-function- policies.md)

<comment><USER3> It's entirely doable to manage permissions granularly, but it's not the most natural thing to do. It's FAR easier to broaden permissions.

The more functions you have and the more time they've had to morph, the more likely they are to have far greater permissions than they should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Admin'ing a system is hard work requiring a deep understanding of many different application, os and network systems, rigorous attention to detail, good communication skills and being subscribed to a variety of fractured news and alert systems to sort out what inbound patches and mitigations are relevant and what can/should be applied.

Which leads me to the point of FAAS (and other managed services like Heroku, etc). which is to let you put up a web service on the increasingly hostile and dangerous Internet without either:

\- Learning all of the above (none of which is taught in a standard CS degree)

\- Hiring a Sysadmin for six figures.

Any time FAAS comes up people correctly point out that a sysadmin still needs to do the work of handling the underlying OS updates, etc - which misses the point. It's the difference between flying in a 737 that's been inspected by a certified mechanic who is looking for a hundred things it would never occur for me to even consider and flown by a pilot with thousands of hours in the cockpit versus someone who flies their small aircraft a couple weekends a month and does their own inspections.

In general, I trust that the security and SRE teams at Google, AWS, Microsoft who are the main people deploying building out these FAAS systems have a better handle on these things than whoever is handling sysadmin tasks on random VPS.

<comment><USER3> I have no doubt the operators of those networks do - on average - a far better job operating the systems. My concern is that FaaS developers would therefore consider FaaS naturally secure, and forget there are still quite a few security risks they have to tackle themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> OS and server stack updates aren't a case of "more secure". Somebody still needs to do that work, and you're trading the responsibility of doing it for the promise that somebody else will (often with no visibility into how and when).

DoS is only "solved" by "infinite capacity" insofar as you're willing to pay for the capacity. If you have any spending caps in place, you'll be DoSed by burning through your budget. DoS protecting must happen at a lower level than that.

<comment><USER3> The fact OS patching is done by people whose entire job and profession is to keep systems patched matters - they are patched more often and faster. In addition, the fact servers don't live long means it's easier to patch servers (since there's no need to patch a running system). So there's a very real difference here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> as a system administrator, I find the summary as laughable as the FAAS movement itself.

"FaaS takes on the responsibility for "patching" the underlying servers, freeing you from OS patching"

So a sysadm-er, devops admin will be rolling these out and back with CI on a regular basis to dev,test and prod.

"Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are naturally thwarted by the (presumed) infinite capacity Serverless offers."

Unless youre invoicing department is cutting cheques to cloudflare, you'd be surprised just how limited the service is. Capacity might be amorphously defined as infinite on paper, but network capacity is quite real.

"Since the OS is unreachable, attackers will shift their attention to the areas that remain exposed – and first amongst those would be the application itself."

the OS is reachable, what you mean to say is that its not your problem.

<comment><USER3> \- A sys admin will _not_ be rolling out OS patches. The platform does itself. \- Attackers typically use DoS to make a system unavailable, not just make it expensive to operate. I do note the cost concern, but if attackers are unsuccessful taking a system down, they are less likely to attack it. \- I indeed meant "attacking through the OS is unreachable", referring to the portion explaining the OS patches are better managed. It's indeed not perfectly accurate phrasing, but allow a guy some literal freedom in the summary - the details came before.

<comment><USER7> Some attackers are perfectly fine with costing a company a ton of money without taking their service down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't necessarily agree with serverless thwarting DoS attacks. While technically it makes it easy to scale to accommodate the increase load (in the same way that auto-scaling will). The denial of a service is the result of your inability to pay for that "infinite" scalability.

Personally I'd much rather have to deal with my service being offline for the duration of a DoS attack, then have my company go broke from having to pay for the capacity allocated to servicing the attack.

<comment><USER3> Fair point. I see the _security_ concern, as far as availability goes, as something FaaS improves, but it's definitely up to you to decide whether downtime is better or worse than a big bill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most likely way an APT compromises your service is via an infrastructure attack - e.g. having your service hacked via a phishing attack and then the APT pivots through the environment until they find the mighty AWS accounts. Server-less doesn't change that.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Known vulnerabilities in application libraries are just as risky as those in the server dependencies, and the responsibility for addressing vulnerable app libraries falls to you – the function developer."

This isn't any different from the non-FASS world, but it is a good reminder that you still need someone doing regular maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Since the OS is unreachable"

Woah slow down there what? That's a significant presumption.

This 'serverless' thing is a fad.

<comment><USER12> "Since the OS is unreachable": "ideally and theoretically, the OS is behind layers of opaque abstraction and we hope nobody will find security holes to directly access it"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related CCC talk [https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7865-gone_in_60_milliseconds](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7865-gone_in_60_milliseconds)</comment>


Learning Real Haskell Incrementally [video] - <AUTHOR> http://begriffs.com/posts/2015-10-24-learning-haskell-incrementally.html <comment><USER2> This is roughly how I learned; I used Hakyll[0] to make my personal site, and working with the Compiler monad it uses taught me to understand monads and use do notation.

It's way easier to learn when you have a reason to be learning, and abstractions always make more sense when you have a case to motivate them.

[0]: [http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/](http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/)

<comment><USER3> Nice example to look at @wetmore, very jeckyl and something I recognise well. I got sick of trying to get Rails working on my light server so I wrote my own in Python version using the same file structure(.md + yaml). So looking at a Haskell example is great. The only bummer I see using Haskell is the install for GHCi. [0]

[0] All my development is on RaspberryPi. You can get it going hacking thru the source but it's a pain. So the running working code generating things is a sort of anti-dote sort of negates this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What projects in Haskell are considered to have well-written, idiomatic code?

I looked at some about a year ago but almost all projects I saw had lot of IO and bangs everywhere.

<comment><USER5> Don Stewart has given possibly the best answer to this question on StackOverflow: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6398996/good-haskell- sour...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6398996/good-haskell-source-to- read-and-learn-from/6399082#6399082)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I almost lost hope that I will get a sensible answer. I don't buy the argument that real world code cannot be pretty; what would be the reason to use Haskell, then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suffer from the problem of languages changing over time as I became disabled in 2003, been in hospitals a lot, recovering at home a lot. Trying to get back into programming after 13+ years of recovery and medical debt that forced me into bankruptcy.

Any book I own is way out of date, I bought books in 2008 that are out of date already. I might as well code in COBOL and FORTRAN on an old Mainframe that didn't change since the 1970s as I still have books from college on those. I tried to work in retroprogramming in writing code for old languages like Visual BASIC 6.0 and ASP 3.0 and VBScript, but found no takers.

I read the LYAH book and found I couldn't get the code to work, Functional Programming is still new to me, so I struggle with it. I was contacted by someone on Github over the debate they had about a code of conduct and she writes in F Sharp and wanted to pair program with me. So I had to learn F Sharp, which is another functional language. I took an EDX course that Microsoft offered on it. I have Visual Studio 2013 Community edition, and I found that even if they say I can use 2013, the course is graded in 2015 which made changes to F Sharp. Some code won't compile and has to be rewritten, code that I write that passes tests may not work in 2015 so my homework assignments got points taken off. Had they run it in 2013 it would have gotten 100% on a score. I was two weeks behind due to being sick and I caught up on everything but the last homework program and I scored 66% needing 50% to pass the course. Even Microsoft changes the way their languages work. What few F Sharp books that exist, are out of date just like the Haskell books.

Oddly enough I have Turbo C code I wrote in 1987 that still compiles on most modern C compilers. I got C4Droid on my Android phone and it compiles the C code without any errors and runs them just right as well. I saved my code on a floppy disk and the moved them to a USB drive and transferred them to my Android phone to see if it would still work.

I sort of wonder why most modern languages aren't backward compatible like C is, and why they break compatibility. I guess it is so they can charge more for the training in the new standard and write new books and teach more courses? Either that or the changes they made had optimize the language so it used less memory and ran faster but broke compatibility wit legacy code.

I find myself still using Python 2.7 instead of 3.X, because I have books that have code that still works with it, and 3.X breaks a lot of things. I found that a lot of GNU/Linux still uses Python 2.X and when you install Python 3.X it is called Python3 on the command line.

This video helps me understand Haskell a bit more, and looking in Github for FOSS Haskell projects to view the source code would help as well.

But I find as soon as I learn something, it has been changed and there is a new version available.

<comment><USER7> I'm fairly sure there's a way to force GHC to compile "Haskell 98" code, which is the first Haskell standard and has stayed the same for 17 years now.

<comment><USER8> Nope. There have been many changes since Haskell 98: for example Applicative is now a superclass of Monad. So not only could you not force a current GHC to compile Haskell 98; in addition, you cannot get Haskell 98 to compile on a current GHC at all.

The only way to be sure you can compile old Haskell is to keep an old GHC and old libraries around. Stackage should make this easier going forward.

<comment><USER9> Applicative didn't exist in 1998, so 1998 code won't have any Applicative code that conflicts with the new language spec.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that 1998 code will have Monad instances that do not have Applicative as a super class.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Still Use Vim – And it's not because I can't figure out how to close it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@caspervonb/why-i-still-use-vim-67afd76b4db6? <comment><USER2> These days it really helps with editing in the cloud, same with emacs, not having to run a gui for your editor enables a chromeos user to get all their work done on a cheap digital ocean instance with a terminal based editor. It takes more work to learn but ultimately gives you the most power especially when working on cloud services.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone considered forking TempleOS and making a modern OS out of it? - <AUTHOR> I've been looking through the source code for TempleOS and playing with it in a VM for awhile now.
I know that Terry Davis has his vision where he feels that it has to be 640x480 and non-networked because God or something told him that was the best, but I was curious the amount of work that would be required to add a few more modern OS.  I think that if it had networking and a few other features here and there, it might be a genuinely usable OS.
So that's my question: Has anyone here considered forking the code and trying to make something useful for modern applications? <comment><USER2> Part of what makes TempleOS so powerful with so little code is that everything fits together, so you can make a lot of assumptions. I don't know the details, but I bet there are lots of design choices that work well, or are able to implement concisely specifically because of the resolution assumption.

Really tightly integrated designs eventually get to the point where there's almost nothing to change... No word could be swapped, no color could be different, because the each design choice relies on the last. Many designers use that as a measure of when something is ready. When you really apply iterative design practices, you add and take away and add and take away, and you eventually end up with an extremely lightweight design that is very strong, but where every piece of the whole is extremely important. Apple strives for this.

I'm not saying TempleOS is there, but that's the kind of design project it is, and that's where it's headed. That's what makes it "holy"... It's not perfect but it's pointed at perfection and it aims to get there. Linus, in contrast, doesn't care if Linux is perfect. He wants to make something that's useful and is willing to make a mess if it helps people get their work done.

</comment><comment><USER3> My counter question is why would you want to?

TempleOS was created with specific goals in mind and is a fun neat oddity because of it. What is there to gain by adding networking and modernizing it in other ways?

In my opinion TempleOS is like knowing about that weird thing in your home town that only people who grew up there know about. No one knows why it exists but it does. Trying to modify it to make it more modern and get more eyes on it just feels like it goes against the idea of what it is.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's this:[https://github.com/minexew/Shrine](https://github.com/minexew/Shrine)

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/minexew/Shrine/issues/2](https://github.com/minexew/Shrine/issues/2)

<comment><USER6> What the hell is with those comments?

<comment><USER7> It is a play on the seemingly random sentences Terry (the creator - or rather the prophet - of TempleOS) would include on his comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought he changed his mind recently about the usefulness of networking. God likes new desciples talking to each other via TCP and UDP sockets.

Joke discussion here: [https://github.com/minexew/Shrine/issues/2](https://github.com/minexew/Shrine/issues/2)

He only forbids gore, i.e. multimedia, memory fragmentation with overly big files >100000 lines.

</comment><comment><USER9> No! You don't get to fork his work and "improve upon it" by pissing all over it. Have some respect!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to assume this is Terry or a troll, though I'll respond with the presumption of Terry will read it.

TempleOS is public domain, so I'm well within my legal right to fork it if I'd like. Respect isn't even part of it; anything in the public domain is up for grabs by anyone.

I don't feel that adding basic TCP and UDP support would be "pissing all over it"; even the Commodore 64 eventually got basic networking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who made his own OS, i feel like this would be an exercise in futility.

Making one is a good learning experience, but you can't keep up with the world completely on your own.

So for it to be worth working on, there should be a non-negligible user and developer base for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why Temple OS?

</comment><comment><USER12> Like... as a hobby project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, starting out, at least. TempleOS has enough legitimately interesting ideas that I think could make a genuinely interesting modern OS if given the time.</comment></comment>


Pittsburgh seed stage fund doing YC-magnitude investment + incubation, with one YC alum advisor - <AUTHOR> http://www.iwalphalab.org/about/about.aspx <comment><USER2> This one is very Pittsburgh. There is explicitly no Silicon Valley pitch day and they expect their companies to stay in Pittsburgh indefinitely. Pittsburgh has a thing where they try and encourage bright young people to stay, because most of them leave. This is a decent attempt at encouraging people to stay in Pittsburgh, but it's counter-productive as far as actually making profitable companies. But hey, that's what investment from the State of Pennsylvania is for!

One of the advisors for AlphaLab was the CEO of YC company SlapVid. Whatever happened to them?

<comment><USER3> "Companies are expected to remain in Pittsburgh after the end of the AlphaLab program."

They have high expectations.

<comment><USER4> Snobby and snarky at the same time! A profitable company can be located anywhere. Pittsburgh actually has a burgeoning tech sector (as rms will probably attest), and I hope this gives it an extra boost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pittsburgh has a very different tech sector than the valley because of the extreme lack of capital. The startups that get funded tend to be very grounded in reality.

A lot of startups come up around UPMC in the medical devices area. The investors that are here are extremely practica/rigidl. There's such a small amount of capital that they can only invest in something that seems like a sure thing, like putting a patented design for a medical device into production. I can't blame them for that strategy, but it doesn't make Y Combinator style companies.

This is a list of companies that got seed stage funding in Pittsburgh in quarter 4 2007. <http://www.popcitymedia.com/timnews/vcroundup1219.aspx>

I do think that this program is good for Pittsburgh. It certainly can't hurt and it is costing Innovation Works so little to run that they can surely afford to do it indefinitely while operating a loss. They get money from the state in the type of post-socialist arrangement that I think is good for society. They have a nice incubator facility in the district of Pittsburgh where I would most like to have an office. It's a decent sized building in the district that has great coffeshops and lots of restaurants and bars.

If anyone from here is thinking of applying, send me an email...

<comment><USER5> Wow. Medical devices are a really tough go. I had a friend out on the East Coast burn through a quick 700k trying to develop a home test to check for blood in a person's stool. They had the device, and had a prototype made. Getting it approved by the FDA was the difficult part.

I was involved in doing studies for FDA drug approval. One phase of testing after a product had already been approved required about $10 million. That was just to test to see if the process worked on additional viruses, not just the one the product was approved for. Getting anything approved by the FDA is a nightmare of red tape and studies.

That's just to be able to sell your product. Getting the Medical community to adopt a new product is very difficult. Doctors are by nature conservative, and trying new things tends to make them nervous. That's one of the big reasons that pharmaceutical companies market so heavily.

But, where there's muck, there's brass, I imagine. I take my hat off to anyone that can make it in the medical startup/device field. Those people deserve all the kudos they can get.

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, the FDA makes most of biotech much more difficult and costly, at least the 99% of it they have jurisdiction over.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GTK+ on OSX is finally available - <AUTHOR> http://www.gtk-osx.org/ <comment><USER2> This, and the app-store debacle, is the kind of stuff that makes me think that Apple isn't in it for the long haul.

Why doesn't MacOSX _ship_ with native GTK? And Qt? Why hasn't OpenOffice worked seamlessly from day 1? Or at least day 5? Why don't Apple embrace the huge community that worships their products, instead of becoming the next Microsoft? What have they got to loose?

If getting my favourite Linux apps to run on my MacBook had bees as easy as apt-get, heck, even as easy as under Windows, I'd still use Mac OS X.. now it's running Kubuntu, and I'm regretting not getting a ThinkPad.

I'm disappointed, I REALLY wanted to like MacOSX.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you REALLY wanted MacOSX to be Linux.

<comment><USER4> Most software developers want that - or, more specifically, all the benefits of Linux with mainstream hardware and application support. What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER5> Is GTK really a benefit compared to Cocoa?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, Cocoa is hot and all, but just try getting that nice shiny Cocoa app of yours running on all three of OS X, Linux, and Windows...

<comment><USER5> If you want to write a cross-platform app, I argue that GTK is _still_ not a very good solution. I wonder how Adobe is progressing with their cross- platform Cocoa-based CS5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want native gimp, and I see a screenshot on the developer page, but I don't see how I would get it (short of downloading and compiling myself). Anybody know more than I?

(edit: trying out <http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/> )

<comment><USER8> Last I tried you could download native gimp, but it was fatally flawed in its keyboard handling. Nice progress, but still more work to go. It's been a while since there was an update, so no breath holding.

<comment><USER9> Up till now, the "native" Gimp still used X11 (which is being worked on (see Xquartz), but still buggy) for OS X. And X11 isn't exactly native on OS X by any means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this mean I can run pidgin/gaim on osx now?

<comment><USER11> Have you ever looked at adium?

<comment><USER12> Unified IRC and IM would be nice (I like pidgin).

<comment><USER9> Adium has an IRC plugin that you can build. And iirc, the Adium devs are aiming for IRC in 1.4</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons learned from 13 failed software products - <AUTHOR> http://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-from-13-failed-software-products/

<comment><USER2> This is a great article, but it would be much better if they highlighted products that were either:

a) Not super-duper niche, or b) Somewhat interesting

In my opinion, a large percentage of these products were missing legs before the developers even started. Be it the idea was ridiculously boring, or it had zero opportunity to make any significant revenue.

I'd prefer to see failed software products which definitely should have taken off, but didn't due to reason X or reason Y.

For example, Company A didn't look for funding for reason X, but then their burn rate got the best of them and the company failed. Or, Amazing Product B was growing really fast, but didn't learn to scale properly in time, so they lost 90% of their customer base when all of their servers crashed for two weeks.

Stories like that would be MUCH more memorable than a guy who failed to turn a profit from chimney sweep software.

<comment><USER3> I really liked hearing about these niche software companies. I've always this thought in the back of my mind that there might be money to be made building niche software because... well no one writes it.

Although, I suspect thinking about it more, it might be developed by people who are selling something else (like the furnance HW company making software for gas power installation companies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know, i'd also be really interested in the reverse of this in pretty much the same format, form successful products. Obviously, people could avoid specifically naming their products and niche but a brief "How long I spent working on it", "How I went about marketing it" and "Lessons I learned from it" would be great.

<comment><USER5> Bob Walsh/Micro-ISV from Vision to Reality (2006) - has a big chapter with interviews of starting "niche" companies from just launched to very successful(HubSpot/FogCreek). It was interesting to revisit their websites and see how many of them survived. Some are dead, some had failed products but they came up with new ones and became successful.

[http://www.amazon.com/Micro-ISV-Vision-Reality-Bob- Walsh/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Micro-ISV-Vision-Reality-Bob- Walsh/dp/1590596013)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Almost everyone cited inefficient market research as a cause for failure. So my question is, how do I carry out market research?

<comment><USER7> It's actually very simple. Hard to do but simple. There is no sophisticated insight or knowledge or process you need to know. It's simple but hard.

Suppose you have an idea for some software for travel agents. Before opening an idea or writing a single line of html you go to the phone book and find the number of a travel agent. You call them and say :

"Hi can I speak to the manager please. Hi there, my name is Sam and I have an idea for a computer software tool that might be useful for Travel agents, I'm not selling anything but would you have 15 minutes available for me to talk to you and get your feedback ?"

Do that 20 times. Talk to 10 different people. List any repeated phrases, objections or suggestions. Ask each of them "Do you think this would be useful to other travel agents ?".

Now if you have the guts to do this very simple but difficult thing enough times that you actually talk to 10 different potential users you will know whether there is a market and if there is you will already have real beta testers lined up.

People may want to pick holes in this "what about..." "what if...". Yeah, you can analyse on the internet all you want but the fact remains, if you do this the chances of you building something people will buy goes up dramatically.

And the reason people don't do this is almost always fear.

(note: I was the Sam Howley in the article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome article. You hear a lot about getting feedback early being a good idea, but this really highlights it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was going to contribute to the list when I saw the call go out. But I didn't know I could make an anonymous contribution. Maybe I'm not yet read to admit the failure is actually a failure all the while the lights are still on.

The main thing to take away is that the formula for success is pretty simple but so many developers ignore it because they think they know better, or are just attracted to the technical challenge like moths to a flame. But if you want to make money with software, you've got to get everything right : the market, the price, the functionality, the presentation, the features. If you do get all this right, well, there's no easier way to make cash if all the skills you have involve using a compiler.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a nice validation of Steve Blank's customer-focused model for creating start-ups. It's the kind of article I want to see more often on HN.

I would like to see more detail about what was done in terms of customer and market research for the more successful efforts though. I'm sure there's some valuable lessons to be drawn from that experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> Any regrets? No.

Wow! Almost every one said that.

Now that I think about it, it's not that surprising. I have had 2 failed product businesses, and looking back, I did lose a lot of time and money. But I learned a lot. Both technically and business. Stuff I could have never learned in a regular job.

I have had quite a few good jobs since those days, and I've always done well, both with the work and the rewards. I attribute my success to those failures.

Failing with a startup often teaches more than succeeding as an employee. You may lose time and money, but the other dividends may make it all worthwhile anyway.

<comment><USER5> That's how our mind works, it's very difficult to admit complete failure. You will always come with some reason to feel better , I guess it's for the better :)

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." \- Theodore Roosevelt

<comment><USER12> Great TED talk in the same vein: [http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of the founders in the article are quick to bash their creation, saying "clearly there was no market need." I am not convinced, even for a very niche product. Poor marketing efforts can be blamed here -- it seems likely of hobbyist developers create a product and just sit there, waiting for someone to come buy it.

</comment><comment><USER14> This talk is about commercial failure, not technical failure. Some products seems a bit too simple and/or reinventing a-square-wheel to me (a syntax highlighter ?!)

<comment><USER15> Actually, I could really use a program to _print_ highlighted code in an optimized way for code review. But I couldn't find a good one that sufficed for my needs (Windows, GUI).

<comment><USER16> Pygments (<http://pygments.org/>) is a Python program that can highlight almost any language, and outputs a bunch of different formats, including HTML and LaTeX. You can see an example of the results at <http://www.railstutorial.org/book> (HTML) and <http://www.railstutorial.org/downloads/pdf?version=2.3.8> (PDF via LaTeX).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lessons learned from 13 failed software products: - 1\. Give up.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't the same person failing all 13 times.;0)</comment></comment>


Bridgewater's Recent Experience with the Wall Street Journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fake-distorted-news-epidemic-bridgewaters-recent-experience-ray-dalio <comment><USER2> It's quite clever of Bridgewater to claim a news article about their strange culture is "fake news". Wondering if Amazon or Theranos is taking notes here.</comment>


Ask HN: is a satellite connection good enough for working from home? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone here tried telecommuting from a satellite connection? Sure, it's good enough for web browsing and github, what I'm more worried about the are regular video calls, due to higher latency. <comment><USER2> I would say no, I have tried satellite and the download speed is decent, but upload speed is not good. There may be a very expensive package that you can get, but from my experience, I would say you need DSL at a minimum.</comment>


UCF researchers develop "impossible" rotating detonation rocket engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/uocf-urd043020.php <comment><AUTHOR> There are some photos and more editorial about impact here: [https://newatlas.com/space/rotating-detonation-engine-ucf- hy...](https://newatlas.com/space/rotating-detonation-engine-ucf-hydrogen- oxygen/)</comment>


Eve Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://witheve.github.io/Eve/tutorials/intro%20tutorial/tutorial.html <comment><USER2> If you wonder (like me) what ever this might be, I found this somewhere:

'Eve is a set of tools to help us think. Currently, those tools include a database, a temporal logic query language, and an IDE.'</comment>


Show HN: Finch, Simple and Open Source Scheduler for Your Apps - <AUTHOR> https://usefinch.co/ <comment><USER2> Finch is also the name of an ncurses chat client.

<comment><USER3> And an HTTP routing/binding DSL for Finagle.

<comment><USER4> And a bird.

<comment><USER5> And a deuteragonist in _Person of Interest_.

<comment><USER6> and an american post-hardcore band from temecula, california.

<comment><USER7> And a character in a socially significant novel, Atticus.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why this comment in particular was downvoted.

It's referring to the character Atticus Finch in the book To Kill a Mockingbird.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly what I've needed with an Heroku app for a student society (i.e. free plan, so no `worker`).

Looks great, will look forward to having the time to check it out and implement properly :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not seeing any sort of 'contract'... what happens if there were network errors, how do you discover failed jobs, etc?

When things go pear-shaped, how do you recover?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an interesting service with at least one quick, clear use: running "cron jobs" on AWS Lambda, though there certainly are other options, this seems nice.

<comment><USER12> > running "cron jobs" on AWS Lambda

You can do that with the AWS Cloudwatch schedule trigger already. Finch seems to allow sub-minute intervals though, which is something that was always missing from Cloudwatch for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great idea. I was thinking about writing something like this that could be deployed to Azure Functions that could replace their Azure Scheduler, which is pretty awful</comment>


Darktable 2.4.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.darktable.org/2017/12/darktable-240-released/ <comment><USER2> The big news with this release is that it's the first to support Windows. I've been using this on linux for a year as a hobbyist Photographer and it's exceedingly glorious. Have not tried out the Windows build but apparently you can do that now [1].

Also if you want to learn a lot about "developing" digital photographs (it really is a digital darkroom), I learned a lot from this youtube list of 42 Darktable tutorial edit sessions [2]. Very powerful and fun stuff.

[1] [https://www.darktable.org/2017/08/darktable-for- windows/](https://www.darktable.org/2017/08/darktable-for-windows/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nUVNDxXhIA&list=PLsks- zRRM1...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nUVNDxXhIA&list=PLsks- zRRM1ZVN_g7P6ZAsYVqTltmXyBjl)

<comment> old-gregg What kind of camera are you using? I've been trying _hard_ to switch from Lightroom to Darktable and so far I have been failing to even match the output of in-camera JPEG engine of my Canon 5D Mk4... The skin tone is just not there... like it knows what highlights are and what shadows are but loses something in the middle. Well-lit RAW are fine, but when the light is challenging I always get better results in Lightroom or Canon's RAW converter (or even in-camera JPEGs) although that's actually when RAW is supposed to help the most.

<comment><USER2> I'm using a Canon Rebel T5i with Magic Lantern. It gets tones really well for me. Sorry it's not performing for you well.

<comment><USER3> I tried installing ML on my T5, but then it was stolen by roommates. How long have they supported T5i? It seemed to be a very convoluted process, and I had no luck, but also mine was T5, not T5i.

<comment><USER2> Not sure how long it's been supported. At least 2 years! For me it was surprisingly easy actually. I just copied the files over to the SD card, inserted it, and ran Firmware Upgrade from the camera menu. It worked great and I love the intervalometer and other neat features.

[http://builds.magiclantern.fm/700D-115.html](http://builds.magiclantern.fm/700D-115.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a long time GIMP user, coming to Darktable has been a revelation. I'm super impressed with how powerful and polished Darktable is, and overall I really love it.

On the other hand, Darktable has some serious issues that make it less than ideal for me.

First, on my old laptop Darktable is super, super slow... especially when the image I'm editing has lots of operations performed on it. In that case, performing a simple operation on top of the existing ones or just zooming in or out could take a full minute, and exporting a single image could take 30 minutes or more (compared to GIMP, which takes less than a minute). Just going from lighttable to darkroom or back could take multiple minutes.

Second, some operations are just much easier and more intuitive to do in GIMP. For example, making perspective changes in GIMP using the perspective tool -- you just drag the corners of the image where you want them. In Darktable you're limited to moving sliders around, which is far more annoying.

Finally, Darktable is mostly geared towards improving photograph quality, while GIMP is more of an all-around image editor and drawing/painting program which can improve the quality of photographs but is not limited to that but can do much more.

<comment><USER5> Sorry. You cannot come to a software release and complain that your old laptop handles a modern software, even a brand new version, with shitty performance. Media processing be it images or video isn't made for old laptops.

<comment><USER4> _" Sorry. You cannot come to a software release and complain that your old laptop handles a modern software with a shitty performance."_

Well, GIMP has new software releases all the time, and works quickly on my old laptop.

You can't blame the fact that Darktable is slow on it being new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those that (like me) have never heard of it before (since the info isn't on the linked page):

 _darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them._

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the home page supposed to contain placeholder like phrases? Such as:

>Mention that having (photographer) developers as part of the target audience is good for understanding the real world problems, challenges, and workflows.

>Something about capability - highlight about some big important features! Maybe mention flexibility here (ease of writing new modules).

>Something about community, mailing list, maybe discuss forum, and the Flickr page? Number of contributors (indicate health of the project and users). Some other metric of vitality of the community (possibly how to get involved)?

<comment><USER8> Can't say, but it actually seems pretty forced, like a joke. All of those placeholders actually link to the resources they'd want. I'd guess it's a poke at regular start-up style "We are awesome because X" statements on their home page.

<comment><USER9> It is a joke :)

<comment><USER8> I actually appreciate it, it seemed a little too curated for placeholders :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First Time User on Windows, its a bit slow during import compared to lightroom (you can't see thumbnails unless you highlight the image file name - maybe I am doing this wrong so I am not sure).

a couple of UI/UX issues I found:

= When I open a tool panel from the "more modules" the panel is added to the tools but its collapsed instead of expanded.

= some filters should be toned down (the sliders have very extreme results with minor movements, this makes it hard to fine tune)

its a much more polished effort than gimp though. I'll keep an eye on darktable!

</comment><comment><USER11> I only started using darktable recently. It's been great with the exception of speed and the MacOS UI having tiny controls. I have a reasonably powerful MacBook Pro and would have expected it to handle things like changing exposure levels pretty quickly.

But honestly I can't complain because this thing allows me to make decent photos fantastic.

<comment><USER12> Since you recently climbed the learning curve and might have this fresh in your mind, how do you understand the history function? Sometimes do something and then want to undo it. This isn't easy for me in darktable -- it seems control-z does nothing, there are no standard menus, and every time I've touched the history section on the left side of the application, I end up destroying much more work than I intended.

In case that is an X-Y question, how do I undo in darktable?

<comment><USER13> > it seems control-z does nothing

Normally v2.4.0 improves this. As stated in their release notes: "Add undo support for masks and more intelligent grouping of undo steps".

Basically, in v2.2, even low-level operations that didn't have a visible impact were in the undo list, so when you pressed Ctrl+Z it would undo something, but you wouldn't see any change. You would actually have to press Ctrl+Z several times to finally see something on the screen.

This was changed and should be more human-friendly :)

> how do you understand the history function?

This is indeed a little bit more complicated that just a list of things to undo. You can read a bit more about it in the user manual: [https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/en/darkroom_concepts.ht...](https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/en/darkroom_concepts.html#pixelpipe)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's been said on Darktable's site and in here that it's not an option for maintaining a catalogue of photos. What would be a good companion app then?

Until I figure something out, I'm waiting for Luminar or whatever Lightroom competitor that Affinity Software is going to come out with later in 2018.

<comment><USER15> Love the Affinity products, just wish they'd support linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great news. I've been using 2.2.5 for the past year on Mac and Linux, and it Is a great RAW editing tool. It does take some getting used to UI-wise (hopefully this release lets me use the trackpad more intuitively), but the non-destructive editing and effect masking are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing I really want DarkTable to allow is deletion of images. They say that any kind of file manager features will not be implemented, but IMHO it's a great preview tool and the ability to just delete poor shots would make it much better for triaging a new batch of photos.

<comment><USER18> Darktable does deletion. If you press "delete" instead of "remove", files are deleted from the file system as well as the library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As Adobe has released the very last non-cloud Lightroom, I guess it's time to move to its "negative" \- Darktable.

<comment><USER10> Thats not true. There are two versions of Lightroom, the cloud one and Lightroom Classic. The Classic is the continuation of the regular desktop version and from what I understand its not going anywhere. Adobe cannot afford to take the desktop version away from photographers cause unlike photoshop there is good (or even better) competitors (e.g. Capture One is chewing up Lightroom's market share being faster and according to a lot of photographers gives better results).

<comment><USER19> I guess you are going to weep:

[https://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2017/12/6-14-now- av...](https://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2017/12/6-14-now-available- last-perpetual-update-of-lightroom.html)

<comment><USER20> I'm fine thanks. That's lightroom 6. Lightroom 7 (lightroom CC Classic) will be continuing just fine as a non-cloud product.

<comment><USER19> It's subscription, rent-seeking based now. I won't call that non-cloud. Cloud is useless anyway as it doesn't allow to upload RAWs and they obviously slapped it on Lr to justify switch to their individual user hostile model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, is this a good replacement for Picasa on windows?

In my case, mainly for viewing and editing Canon raw format photos?

<comment><USER22> It's nowhere near as good as Picasa or Lightroom for bulk editing, sharing, and general photo library management. But it absolutely destroys Picasa for the actual editing of raw files. I'd say if post processing is your focus, it's without a doubt worth the switch. If you're more of a "shoot lots and manage in bulk", then no.

I personally find the file/library management aspect of Darktable so lacking that it's personally useless to me. I absolutely despise Adobe and would pay double what I give them for a decent Lightroom alternative, but it just doesn't exist yet and won't anytime soon.

<comment><USER23> I'm in the same boat as you. I tried Darktable, Capture One, On1, AfterShot Pro, etc. None of them were close to Lightroom. Then, with low expectations I tried Exposure X3 ([https://www.alienskin.com/exposure/](https://www.alienskin.com/exposure/)) and now I've completely replaced Lightroom with it. It might not work for you, but I was pleasantly surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it support Mac Os for current version? the display on my Linux box is not as good as on Imac.

<comment><USER25> Yes: [https://www.darktable.org/install/#macos](https://www.darktable.org/install/#macos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish they support photo management, at least import photos into organized folders by date

<comment><USER27> Serious question: Is there any good photo management software? I'm not even a hobbiest photographer but I've got 300GB of photos over 15 years, and it's a pain in the ass to manage these.

I tried Lightroom, but that was excruciatingly slow to import the photos, and on top of that it had very counter intuitive controls. It was also not cheap at all, and subscription based.

I tried Google Photos (my current setup), but while cloud storage is nice, it's UI sucks (it is Google after all), but most annoyingly you can't actually name people in photos. Instead you have to wait for the face to get processed, then peruse 1000 faces of strangers just to find the face (hopefully) and then assign a name for it. Seriously, I can't name my daughter in any picture taken in the last 2 years because of this.

Apple Photos seems like the product I most want, but it insists that all the photos get stored locally, which is a nonstarter. Its cloud storage doesn't make any sense because it seems like sync, which never what I want. Finally, it barfs if you try to import too many pictures at once.

I've been using python scripts to manages my photos, but I'd really like good graphical manager that supports geo and face tagging, maybe some of the event stuff like Google Photos. Does anyone else have this problem? I can't believe I'm the only one with these problems, but at the same time it's hard for me to see a niche market for this. Any thought?

<comment><USER28> I forgot to mention that DT support lua scripting[1] which might help you to further automate some steps of your photo management process.The Lua API is fairly complete.

You can also grap some existing lua plugin like the one who can export/import to GIMP.

[1] [https://www.darktable.org/lua-api/](https://www.darktable.org/lua-api/) and [https://github.com/darktable-org/lua- scripts](https://github.com/darktable-org/lua-scripts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I slowly warmed up to Darktable as I began to shoot raw in the summer. During the holidays I had access to a Winblows machine and tried the hyped Capture One... doesn't seem to hold candle for DT!

</comment><comment><USER30> I somehow confused this with 'Lighttable' and was really confused about why printing was such an important issue.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a shame open source projects with great features still have astoundingly bad copywriting.

No one cares about it having a database behind the scenes or the upgrade/downgrade process, tell me what it can do and how it compares to the real alternative, Adobe Lightroom.

<comment><USER32> HN links to the news article so I was confused as to what Darktable was, I clicked on a few of the links in the menu and couldn't figure out quickly what it was, I then googled to find out it was an alternative to lightroom, so I googled darktable and clicked on the link to find out there's a homepage with the information I was looking for initially... But there's no menu item to get to the homepage?

<comment><USER33> There's a link to the homepage in every single page of the website, it's the image of the logo.

While I agree that it's not obvious, that's a common practice (Hacker News does the same) so you should probably keep that in mind.

<comment><USER32> Hah, didn't even think of clicking the logo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Model X - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx/ <comment><USER3> What is absolutely stunning about what Tesla is building is simply that they are building gorgeous vehicles with great features/performance and they are charging appropriately for them. They aren't built to fit into a particular price range or demographic, they're built to be great vehicles, so that people will want to buy them.

I'll admit it, I want to buy a Tesla, even if it makes no financial sense for me to do so.

<comment><USER4> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I saw a model S in person for the first time about a month ago and was struck by just how bland the car looked. It had a vibe that made me think of mazda and not miata or rx7 but whatever their sedans are called. The kind of styling that wouldn't turn a single head.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, I am a big believer that flashing ones wealth is a bad idea - it's gaudy as well as attracts unwanted, potentially dangerous, attention.

<comment><USER5> The Model S designer, Franz von Holzhausen, worked for Mazda between 2005 and 2008! He also did the Pontiac Solstice. The Model S reminds me more of a Maserati than a Mazda though. I think it looks amazing.

<comment><USER6> Maserati is what I think of when I see it. It's a beautiful blend between sport/luxury. I think 'normal' is a better description than 'bland'. It's about time we stopped making things look like space pods just because they're unconventional (the original Honda Insight comes to mind.)

<comment><USER7> I wonder if this is due to the subtle similarities between the Maserati and Tesla logos?

[http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia....](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Maserati_logo.svg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maserati_logo.svg&h=708&w=461&sz=17&tbnid=WDa_Igrbe_KXPM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=63&zoom=1&usg=__Vkg0650RTdgvgDamnHrUiAooD1Q=&docid=puFdJiUckBhPwM&sa=X&ei=TK0TUrvDEI7sigLswIHYAw&sqi=2&ved=0CCwQ9QEwAA&dur=477)

[http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.youthareaweso...](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.youthareawesome.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/Tesla- logo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.youthareawesome.com/tesla-motors/tesla- logo/&h=1024&w=1280&sz=87&tbnid=UfolMylrLSFxgM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=122&zoom=1&usg=__JdFQSo9yXxe6kTZHxf68gYkQ70M=&docid=ehbTe7eL6y70yM&sa=X&ei=ba0TUqOJLMaiiQLYvIGIDg&sqi=2&ved=0CEcQ9QEwBA&dur=541)

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the not-so-subtle similarities between the Maserati and Tesla cars

[http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&sa=N&biw=1680&bih=887&hl=e...](http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&sa=N&biw=1680&bih=887&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbnid=F3rkcG7YipoWSM:&imgrefurl=http://rapgenius.com/1649017/Que- freemind-dope-shit/It-aint-a-lambo-or-maserati-im-riding- in&docid=thZc5jAvF7_MYM&imgurl=http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%25252FfRaWUxncSTyzUdlOHP45_Maserati_GranTurismo_front_20071104.jpg&w=1839&h=1137&ei=ss8TUoueMc_a4AOZz4HYDQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:2,s:0,i:95&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=175&tbnw=271&start=0&ndsp=18&tx=181&ty=58)

[http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1680&bih=887&tbm...](http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1680&bih=887&tbm=isch&tbnid=PX7Wt_x4oly07M:&imgrefurl=http://blog.roundrockoffices.com/tesla- model-s/&docid=_8z31xQh15fKrM&imgurl=http://blog.roundrockoffices.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/tesla- model-s.jpg&w=1280&h=850&ei=us8TUquRHZKo4APVr4CoDA&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:0,s:0,i:87&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=182&tbnw=262&start=0&ndsp=18&tx=172&ty=86)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One silly thing to keep in mind if you're in the UK or Europe: You'll need to wait longer to take it on the Channel Tunnel, since it needs to ride in a tall vehicle/truck/bus car, which doesn't go with every train.

I sat in line for that compartment behind a Lamborghini Countach once. With like a 36 inch curb height, he could certainly fit in a normal compartment. But he couldn't open the doors, so he'd be stuck in the car the whole trip.

First world problems...

<comment><USER10> >so he'd be stuck in the car the whole trip.

It's roughly a 30 minute trip. Would the wait for the different carriage be worth it ?

<comment><USER11> You try convincing a train company that you'd like to be transported as cargo.

<comment><USER10> I've been on this train on a tourbus, you're not expected / required to go out unless you want to use the bathroom. Maybe it's different for car transport. Imagine a normal train although slightly bigger where you yourself drive on and park. It's not an open carriage like a 'normal' car transport would use.

<comment><USER12> It is different for car transport. Primarily for fire safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't seem to tell me how much it is..

Generally if I have to ask the price, I probably can't afford it.

I want an electric car, I want one with a range of about 400 miles, with charging stations to support it. jAs soon as the electric car is as easy for me to use as a gasoline powered one, I'm ready to drive one.

For what it's worth, my line of work (making all those mobile devices work) requires an enormous amount of driving.

<comment><USER14> That is because it is not for sale yet, all you can do is reserve it for 5,000 dollars but i would expect it to be around the same price as a model s.

<comment><USER15> $5,000 is an incredible amount of money. If I were to spend that amount on a pre-order, I deserve to know what I'm paying for and how much it will cost me.

<comment><USER16> You have 14 days to decide once your number is called. Put the deposit on a new credit card with multiple bonus points in the first month. Get yourself a vacation for lending someone $5,000 when interest rates are so low and decide later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might not be as much of a problem for most of the target market, but I was really excited about the Tesla X until I heard about the doors - <USER2> no roof rack options at all. Here in Utah, I would love a nice, capable car in the snow with plenty of room for gear, but if I can't put mountain bikes on the roof or a roof box with skis on it in the winter, it's not very useful...

Maybe I'm just not in the target demographic, but I can't imagine I'm the only one who wants roof racks on my electric SUV...

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure you want to drive an electric car in the snow. Not that the torque wouldn't be great, but the cold would wreck your range.

<comment><USER19> It sure does, at least when you need the heater. In a conventional car, you'll get lots of extraneous heat from the engine, so heating is basically free. In the case of an electric car, an electric heating elements must be used with the same battery power as the electric motors. That is bound to hurt the range.

<comment><USER20> I have driven a Tesla Roadster for 3 years. The heater does not impact range much.

<comment><USER21> In what climate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apologies if I'm missing something obvious, but is there anything new here regarding the Model X (e.g. pricing) or is this just an FYI for people who may not have been aware that it was a thing? At a glance I'm not seeing anything that looks to have changed recently on this page.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, pricing would seem to be a critical piece of info for reservation. Unfortunately I can't see what happens when you click on the "reserve now" link because the JS doesn't work in my browser (Aurora on Linux.)

<comment> qu4z-2 I don't think it's your browser. It's not working properly under Firefox on Windows either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess I don't remember the falcon doors because this is a non-starter for me. It starts out talking about "best of an SUV with the benefits of a minivan". Well, in my world that means electric sliding rear doors and the abilily to mount our kayaks, racing shells or bikes on the roof.

What the hell were they thinking? The door has been left wide open for someone to do it right. I'll be in the market for two new SUV's by early 2014. That's when I expect to go past 250,000 miles on my current ones. I've been saying I was going to buy two Teslas. Now I can't see a way to even remotely consider the idea.

Sadly this feels like a lot of other companies with roots in the Slicon Valley community: A bunch of really young guys making decisions completely outside the context of the realities of families in the real world. Keep your falcon doors, they sure are cool but they are a colosal failure to capture my reality and that of millions of other potential customers.

EDIT: I secretly wanted Tesla to build a really nice electric boat as well. I envisioned buying the set: An electric SUV pulling an electric boat to the lake. No, instead they build a bullshit SUV that misses the "Sport" and "Utility" part in "SUV". All you are left with is a vehicle and a useless one if you truly use an SUV for an active lifestyle that involves more than skateboarding.

<comment><USER25> Whoah, falcon doors are a deal breaker for _millions_ of potential customers? Are you sure?

They're my favorite thing about the car. I hadn't even considered the issue with putting things on the roof, because I've never put anything on a roof before. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't need that capability.

<comment><USER26> It's a lot more common among SUV and wagon owners than regular car owners. The dirty secret of small SUVs and crossovers is that if you have the rear seat full of passengers, there is very little room for their luggage. Generally when you take 4 people camping you need about twice as much equipment as when you take 2 people camping, but only have about 20% the space to fit it in. The exception is really big SUVs like the Yukon XL, but for small SUVs, a sedan like a Crown Vic actually has more luggage capacity when 4 passengers are in the vehicle.

The hack to solve this is the roof rack.

I think the best solution is still a diesel SUV/pickup, and a Model S (or smaller) electric car.

<comment><USER24> I realize there are all kinds of use profiles. I know there are lots of people who buy SUV's simply because they are larger and easier to get in and out of than a car and not for the "sport" in SUV.

Tesla's claim is that this model merges the best of SUV's and minivans. That's a tall order. And the falcon doors are completely opposite that definition.

In our case, we live a reasonably active life style. Fishing, kayaking, sculling, stand-up paddle-boarding, biking, camping are typical activities for our family.

We are also into model airplanes, with some being rather large. I've been known to strap a fuselage or two to the roof rack to to flying.

I do a bit of woodworking and home improvement work. It isn't too uncommon for me to go to Home Depot and strap a bunch of lumber to the roof rack.

So, for me, when you say "SUV" and "minivan" along with "the best of both" the last thing I'd put down on the list of specs would be doors that make the roof absolutely unusable. This is what I call a Gucci SUV. One that never gets dirty and never sees sports-utility work. It's just a bigger car and a beautiful one at that.

The only way I can possibly justify getting one of these is to keep either our SUV or minivan for lugging stuff around. If I do that I might as well buy a car and benefit from better aerodynamic efficiency. I am disappointed because I was truly hoping to go all electric next year.

<comment><USER27> "This is what I call a Gucci SUV. One that never gets dirty and never sees sports-utility work. It's just a bigger car and a beautiful one at that."

That's how roughly 99% of SUV owners use their SUV, so I don't really see the problem here....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like Tesla and I like this car okay, but that is not a crossover. I have a Nissan Rogue which is on the smaller side of the crossover range and the body height it still significant enough where you could tell it's certainly not a sedan even with a casual glance. The only similarity that has is the flat back.

Good luck as well with those falcon wing doors when you're trying to park at your downtown football stadium or of course, wanting any roof accessories. Once again, not a crossover, because crossover basically means a small engine SUV. This is a sedan with a flat ass.

Wouldn't there be major safety concerns during a rollover? How the hell would you get out of your burning Model X?

<comment><USER29> The Model X has such a low centre of gravity that you'd need to be driving almost deliberately to rollover; the only exception to that would be driving the car with negligently low tire pressure and/or overly soft suspension (I always wondered why rollover rates in the US were so high until I realised that cars that ship in America tend to have much softer suspension than they do in the rest of the world).

<comment><USER28> This could actually be even lower on the highway as well due to the smart suspension (optional, but common) that lowers the car at highway speeds.

Why are suspensions softer in the US? Is that simply related to the fact that a large slice of the rural market is driving on unpaved roads frequently? I would assume this would be an issue elsewhere in the world also, but perhaps not in Europe.

<comment><USER30> I don't know that cars in the US necessarily have softer suspension than their European counterparts, but I can attest to the fact that it is not due to the rural population. Much of the rural population will be driving pickup trucks or truck-based SUVs, which have much stiffer suspension than a normal car.

I know that older Cadillac models would have very soft suspension (that's why people refer to them as boats, they take bumps like they were riding waves). I can't attest to that being a factor in any higher incidence of rollovers. If there was in fact a higher percentage of rollover accidents in the US, I would put more money on this being due to the fact that the US really likes truck- based SUVs (Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeep Wrangler, Chevy Blazer/Tahoe, Toyota 4Runner, etc) with lots of weight really high up. My 1998 4Runner even had a warning sticker saying you can't corner like you would in a car without risk of rollover.

In short, people buy cars they don't know how to drive.

<comment><USER28> Oh right, I guarantee you this is correct. It's the popularity of high center of gravity cars like SUVs combined with a lack of driving ability. Nice thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Try as I might, I simply can't get worked up about Tesla.

They make excellent toys for rich people, but are irrelevant to everyone who is not some sort of millionaire entrepreneur or high-paid executive.

Electric vehicles are incredibly attractive and massively beneficial to society if they are adopted at scale. Unfortunately, Tesla seems content to cultivate an image as an ultra-luxury brand, and hasn't attempted to lower the barrier to entry for electric vehicles.

I have no problem with companies that only want to sell expensive things to very wealthy people, but we can't possible pretend that companies like these will matter in the grand scheme of things.

Wake me up when we can buy an electric car for $12,000.

<comment><USER31> 'Electric cars for everyone! Woohoo!'

^^ that's the exciting bit, right?

However, you don't get there without Tesla. Why not?

Because you can't compete with low-margin products in a low-margin industry, _and_ still innovate in a sector where you need lots of R&D, where component costs are _currently_ expensive but are _expected_ to drop over time, etc.

Even the much-celebrated entry, at scale, of other manufacturers into the electric-car market is due to Tesla.

Tesla is kinda like Apple in this. They built a very adventurous, dangerously new, premium product, and really committed to it (think mac/iphone; like Tesla, it's not like there weren't other similar products/concepts, but a good consumer product hadn't existed). Upon market validation of the concept, other people jumped in (windowed PCs with initially non-clipping windows; initially crappy android phones).

The reason this is exciting? Because: 'electric cars for everyone! woohoo!'

IT'S VALIDATED THE MARKET! They've waded into a real, big industry, taken on incredibly ambitious problems ('start a car company', 'make an electric car'), and in the process created demand for a new premium product, something the market 'didn't know it wanted'.

Without Tesla demonstrating that there's a premium market segment here to be targeted -- essentially doing market research for larger companies -- we don't get there as fast.

Other people invented (windowed desktops|electric cars). But without (Mac|Tesla) productizing it successfully, how many years would it be before the consumer enjoyed (windowed OS'|electric cars)?

<comment><USER32> "Try as I might, I simply can't get worked up about cellphones.

They make excellent toys for rich people, but are irrelevant to everyone who is not some sort of millionaire entrepreneur or high-paid executive.

Mobile communication is incredibly attractive and massively beneficial to society if they are adopted at scale. Unfortunately, cellphone manufacturers seem content to cultivate an image as an ultra-luxury brand, and hasn't attempted to lower the barrier to entry for mobile.

I have no problem with companies that only want to sell expensive things to very wealthy people, but we can't possible pretend that companies like these will matter in the grand scheme of things.

Wake me up when we can buy an cellphone for $120."

[http://www.mycricket.com/community/sites/all/uploads/images/...](http://www.mycricket.com/community/sites/all/uploads/images/michael- douglas-wall-street.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I remember watching an interview not too long ago about Elon being disappointed with how slowly the regulations around cars are to change. He mentioned specifically putting cameras in place of the side mirrors, and how Tesla petitioned to have the laws around it changed about 3 years ago. Looks like they succeeded in getting the laws changed.

Seems weird that they went for the SUV crossover next. Although I guess that's the next rung on the ladder in order of bringing the price down. Fancy 2 seater -> Fancy sedan -> semi-fancy suv -> semi-fancy van | semi-fancy car.

<comment><USER34> SUVs are the most profitable vehicle for automakers, so it makes perfect sense that Tesla would build one next.

Now that the public has been primed for electric vehicles and Tesla is building out a charging infrastructure, they're beginning to target the middle-of-the-road owners, not just early adopters.

<comment><USER35> Yes but the reason for SUV's being the most profitable vehicles for automakers (actually, big trucks are if you make them) is not applicable here. It has to do with basically making them off your existing car platform (scale/leverage) but charging more. I do agree with mercuryrising though that this is the next extension in the original vision.

<comment><USER36> The Model X shares 60% of its parts with the Model S. I believe that, critically, the "sled" (battery tray and motors) are shared between the two.

<comment><USER35> Right. But no car they make is yet at much in the way of economies of scale due to their tiny volumes compared to a "normal" car maker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's new here? I don't see any change from yesterday ...

<comment><USER18> Agree that this isn't new. The only different bit is that, when I first looked at this page in February 212, it said deliveries would be in "Early 2014" and now it's just 2014.

<comment><USER37> It was announced earlier this year: [http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la- fi-hy-tesla-to-repa...](http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla- to-repay-federal-loans-five-years-early-20130308,0,5843577.story)

> The automaker said that potential customers awaiting its upcoming Model X-- > billed as the best of an SUV with the benefits of a minivan, in an electric > car--were going to have to wait a bit longer.

> Production on the Model X had been expected to begin late this year, with > deliveries beginning in 2014. Production has now been pushed back to late > 2014.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like the gullwing doors have the height issue to contend with, plus what are the chances you knock your 5-year old's chin on the way up?

I drive a sporty 2-door SUV and what I've long hoped to find was a 2-door suv with sliding doors - basically mini-van doors. The Peugot 1007 is the only vehicle I've ever seen like that and it was a little too econo-box for my taste.

[http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/outdoor/peugeot-1007-han...](http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/outdoor/peugeot-1007-handy- sliding-doors-7474055/)

<comment><USER38> >plus what are the chances you knock your 5-year old's chin on the way up?

Probably the same chances that you will knock over your child when you swing open a conventional door. That being said, they'll learn quickly to step back from opening doors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > promises 3rd car will be a cheap model that will change the world.

Delivers soccer parent SUV. With lambo doors.

<comment><USER40> This isn't the 3rd model of the sequence you're thinking. This is the 2nd Model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Tesla is Apple of the car industry.

<comment><USER42> Someone had to do it. When the iPhone was initially released, I speculated whether Apple itself would one day go into cars. While the end product seems far from what they do they don't really sell specific products. They sell objects that people become attached to. they don't become attached because it is an Apple product, but because Apple sell products in the areas of things people become attached to.

Computers, and Smartphones have that level of attachment. The other stand-out items are cars and houses. A lot of people define their identities by their choice of those items.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> >We noticed you're visiting from Australia. Would you like to visit the Australian version of the site?

It's ridiculous that the web is in such a state that I thought this was a very impressive feature. You either get redirected, occasionally against your will, or have to add .au to your current URL and hope it works.

<comment><USER44> No, that is exactly the only way to do it right.

If I visit a link on HN, I want to reach the same site everyone's talking about. Not teslamotors.de or somesuch crap. I'm looking at you, Google, among other offenders.

Offering a localized site, in a clearly visible but unobtrusive way, is a good choice and I'd like to see more sites adapt this pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am blown away by how the doors open. I've never seen someone tackle the "oops. I'll be bumping/almost scratching into the 7-series next to me when I open my door" problem so elegantly.

Edit: typo.

<comment><USER46> I've always been slightly enamored with the rotary drop doors that slide under the car [1]. I would never buy a car with them, but they are interesting none the less.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAtkoje4-eM&t=35s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAtkoje4-eM&t=35s)

<comment><USER47> Have you seen the Koenisegg doors? Those are my favorite...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svxRpqeqFRY&t=150s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svxRpqeqFRY&t=150s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Gull-wing doors are a smart move, sales wise. They give you the exotic feel. But I'm concerned with them in practice. Since no height specification is given, I used this image as a reference to determine the height of the Model X with the doors fully open.

[http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/bg_03_falconw...](http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/bg_03_falconwings_prod.png)

The Model S is 56.5" tall. So assuming the above image is to scale and my math is correct, the Model X is 85.65" tall with doors fully open.

85" tall... For reference, a Ford F-150 is 75" tall ([http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/specifications/exterior/](http://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/specifications/exterior/)) and a Ford F-250 is 79.8" ([http://www.ford.com/trucks/superduty/specifications/exterior...](http://www.ford.com/trucks/superduty/specifications/exterior/)) in the worst case.

Granted, most Tesla buyers are not average people with average-sized garages. But still, that's tall.

There's a reason more cars don't have gull-wing doors. They aren't practical for a lot of spaces.

And yes, I did see the in-garage-with-doors-open image.

[http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/bg_04_garage_...](http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/bg_04_garage_prod-06-kc.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER49> broken reserve now page?

[http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx/own#/model-x](http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx/own#/model-x)

</comment><comment><USER50> The body looks alot like the Honda Crosstour [http://www.autoweek.com/storyimage/CW/20121115/CARNEWS/12111...](http://www.autoweek.com/storyimage/CW/20121115/CARNEWS/121119899/AR/0/2013-Honda- Accord-Crosstour.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm using chrome on this site and the experience seems subpar for such an amazing car. I click the link to see Elon's unveiling and I am brought to a page with a 360 click and drag that doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER52> This guys need to seriously consider redesigning the front plate.

They put it there because all normal gas cars need it, but electric cars don't need it, or need a very small one.

The rest of the car, I love it.

<comment><USER53> It seems to me the design is deliberately conservative for some reason.

<comment><USER54> Yep. These are designed to look like 'normal' cars so as not to spook the generally conservative market. Mk II or III will be significantly different in design from today's car I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The tesla touchscreen looks absolutely massive. Really a bit too gaudy for my tastes. Then again it's just a mockup. Is that a screen behind the steering wheel?

<comment><USER56> Screen only as instrument cluster behind the steering wheel is nothing new, other cars have this already. But I'm wondering, is that a live video of the road in front of you projected in that display?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> So what is the price?

</comment><comment><USER26> I am afraid it looks a little too much like an Aztek from the rear.

I want a Model S AWD. The X doesn't have a single real trunk so it sucks if you park anywhere non secure.

It does make the S v X v Blue Star decision a little harder.

<comment><USER37> It's coming: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4592248/tesla-to-produce- al...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4592248/tesla-to-produce-all-wheel- drive-model-s-sedan-next-year)

<comment><USER26> I assume at the cost of the frunk, which is ok.

<comment><USER58> The motor isn't that big; there'll still be some frunk left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> > the best of an SUV with the benefits of a minivan

How do you fit a family of 5 in this thing like you can in a minivan? Honestly, it seems more of a station wagon minus the storage.

<comment><USER60> Yeah the word hatchback comes to mind. remember the frunk though. This thing probably does have a lot of cargo capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I can't really tell whether all the doors are falcon wings or just the rear doors. Anyone have more info?

</comment><comment><USER62> Reservations been taken, but anyone knows what the price(s) of the vehicle are?

</comment><comment><USER63> Good luck getting out of those falcon wing doors when the car flips over...

<comment><USER64> I'm sure it just lifts the whole car up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I wonder if these guys would be open to collaborating on a motorcycle.

</comment><comment><USER66> No rear view mirrors? Replaced by cameras! Bold move.

</comment><comment><USER67> Are those cameras in place for side-view mirrors?</comment>