Dropbox hires a COO: Dennis Woodside, former Motorola Mobility CEO - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/12/dennis-woodside-has-a-new-home-at-dropbox/ <comment><USER2> > Dropbox raised $350 million in a financing round that valued the six-year- > old startup at $10 billion.

This is interesting. DB still rely on funding instead of revenue? I am sure they are working hard on enterprise-level plan. Were DB the one asking for the funding or someone proposed to DB to take the $$.

The other thing is that he's going from a CEO to a COO. From a business outsider, I see this as a downgrade.

<comment><USER3> Dropbox is clearly growing faster than their revenue cashflow can support, so it's quite reasonable for them to continue to raise money. It's obvious to everyone in the industry that Dropbox intends to IPO sometime in the next couple years. Hiring this COO allows Drew to focus on 1) hiring 2) IPO issues. Neither Drew nor Arash has IPO experience, and while it's easy enough to get advisors (and hire a great CFO), it still seems to be the case that these companies bring in a couple more IPO-experienced execs before.

They were pretty under-resourced on CFO until 2011 at least -- I don't know who they have now. I'd watch their CFO hiring for the most impending signs of an IPO. Look what happened at Facebook -- hiring David Ebersman.

IMO, CEO of Motorola Mobility to even a Director at Dropbox, Apple, etc. would be an upgrade.

<comment><USER2> Okay. Fair point. I am probably still thinking of the old Motorola Inc which has been divided into two organizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The guy who oversaw the making of the best Android phone for the average person, which could have challenged the iPhone, but apparently failed to realize that it's more important to make it affordable and available internationally than to make it in America and have customizable back covers. His plan was flawed, but well executed, so I guess it makes sense that he's going to be a COO since the COO role is all about execution.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main sellable product of a modern very successful startup is public stock. They will soon fulfill this objective. The money that makes the insiders rich comes from the shareholders, not from the revenues. This is the unfortunate reality of America in 2010s. On a sidenote, it is my prediction that the Quantitative Easing is permanent.

</comment><comment><USER6> What would the responsibilities of a COO be? What makes a good COO? Do we know any famous COOs ?

<comment><USER7> A COO is great in a large company, where the CEO can be more hands-off and have a more representative role. In startups or small companies it's frankly a waste and just leads to very conflicting sets of responsibilities and infighting. Been experiencing this myself.

<comment><USER6> As a COO or as a CEO?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He's a really smart manager. Perfect for a COO role, though I'm surprised he didn't try to jump in higher. I guess he's trying to do the Sheryl Sandberg model of far-reaching COO under a charismatic but less experienced CEO.

</comment><comment><USER9> How long was he actually at Motorola? It seems like he was just there to help Google flip it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Poor guy, couldn't get a job at Apple or Intel [0]. Got lucky Dropbox hired him.

[0] [http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon- valley...](http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most- celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/)</comment>


Design Responsive Websites Visually - <AUTHOR> http://webflow.com/

<comment><USER2> From what I see in the screenshots, this looks very impressive. I can see myself and team using a tool like this very often at work. Looking forward to hearing more about this tool in the future!</comment>


China's Millennials Are Happy to Own Nothing - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-12-02/why-china-s-millennials-are-happy-to-own-nothing <comment><USER2> FTA: "Faced with a widening wealth gap and the slowest economic growth in more than two decades, millions like Xiong find themselves priced out of the big cities and are rejecting the consumer trappings of a modern lifestyle. Instead, they're embracing the sharing economy to a far greater degree than their Western counterparts."

Ah, so rising rent and stagnant wages are causing reduction in lifestyle among the youthful. The article could be shortened to "people have less money, so they are forced to make do with less." There are many discussions about these cultural memes spawned by downward economic trends; some items are useful (sharing a power tool instead of purchasing), but they're the result of funding being constrained and people's expectations adjusting downward as a result. These people are not sworn to poverty, so I doubt they are actually happy to own nothing, so much as grudgingly adapting to owning less than their parents.

EDIT: Communes can make a comeback gracefully as part of this economic trend, but it's still important to understand that generations losing wealth isn't a positive thing.

<comment><USER3> Decoupling personal happiness from accumulation of consumer goods as an end in itself seems like both a positive and a conceivable thing to me, even if it were a cultural meme with roots that are out of people's direct control such as an economic downturn. These things aren't mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER4> We're not in an economic downturn, either in the U.S. or China. Workers just aren't seeing the benefits of a return to economic growth.

<comment><USER5> If x age group, social group, or "middle class" is experiencing an economic downturn - but the country as a whole is stable or upward - are they not still in an economic downturn?

This is a very common phenomenon with statistics... for example I frequently come across people citing that x time in history had early death rates - <AUTHOR> you likely wouldn't have lived past 40 - without explaining the majority of deaths were due to infant death from disease. But if they in fact made it past early childhood then those projected maximum age numbers were not relevant.

This is why it's important to not plan based on global averages. One reason why conducting "cohort analysis" is very important in business analytics.

<comment><USER4> Right, but calling it an "economic downturn" confuses the issue in the same way not including infant mortality does. The important thing to realize here is that the economy is growing, i.e. more overall wealth is being generated. That enables you to ask the question -- if there's more wealth being generated but most people in society are seeing their wealth and income stagnate or decrease, what is going on, and why?

<comment><USER5> Well in that context the next question should be does growth need to be distributed evenly for the economy to be considered 'healthy'. But for individuals such as the person mentioned in the article this is less relevant, they shouldn't make financial decisions or life choices as if everything is good because the macro-level is seeing positive growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This opened my eyes because the Chinese international students in my university (the only contact I have with people from that country) buy the most extravagant stuff. I'm somewhat knowledgeable about fashion brands, and I see them wear what would amount to $1000+ in outfits daily. And that's just clothing I recognize. "Wanting to own everything" (that is trendy!) is a common stereotype of them in my university. That said, in general they're humble and nice.

Guess I'm only getting exposed to the Chinese 1%, so thanks for this article.

<comment><USER7> $1000 outfit is standard. Boots that don't suck, jeans, jackets, sweaters, watches, accessories add up super quickly.

<comment><USER6> Maybe for someone with a job, but not for the average US college student. Here I'd argue most people wear at most $100-500, depending on how much they care. This is for guys by the way. And like I said, 18-25 year olds without jobs or part time jobs.

I originally typed $1500-2000... I see a lot of Thom Browne stuff here, and that means $350 for a button up, $1000 for shoes. But it's probably a minority still, and you can't tell how much shoes/boots cost without knowing the brand (though I've seen some Rick Owens sneakers).

Edit: Saw you mentioned winter. Yeah that drives my number up. My $1000 was based on fall/spring type of stuff.

<comment><USER8> It's obvious he's far above any normal person, part of the rich. His "friends" buy bags for $2k each, according to this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10673865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10673865)

I don't think the struggles of normal people, or the fact that people have to save money, are understood by someone like him.

EDIT: I don't usually read through comment histories, but here it's to provide a context, not to judge the person, and these earlier comments from him, a few weeks ago, harden my belief: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10288459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10288459) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10124135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10124135) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049439) although this comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9195212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9195212) goes in the other direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bring up communes in America and everyone assumes you are crazy or in a cult.

It's not like I just think it would be optimal to share a kitchen or bulk meals and maybe actually talk to my neighbors.

Living in tiny isolated groups is the American dream.

<comment><USER10> Great if it works for you, but buddy I could never go back to having roommates, sharing a bathroom or a kitchen, or even having a shared wall with a neighbor. I like my privacy and security, and no, "my bedroom door closes" doesn't meet the bar.

<comment><USER11> I'm considering building a tech worker commune in the mountains of North Carolina. Solar/wind generation on site, fiber connectivity, etc. Communal kitchen/coworking space. Your home would be a tiny house you build or pull to the site.

Your living arrangements are what you make of it. I've lived in a 4000 sq foot home in the suburbs, and I've lived in a condo in a major metro (Chicago).

Nuts to possessions and competing on living space, I just want to spend time with good people.

<comment><USER12> _I just want to spend time with good people_

This!

Your idea is awesome. But why restrict only to tech workers? At the least, you could let all digital workers stay?

<comment><USER11> Honestly, its open to anyone. Not many non-folks have a need for solid connectivity in the middle of nowhere though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is more of a smaller counter-culture group. The majority of millenials living the metropolitan areas of China are not of this mentality.

<comment><USER14> I agree. From my experience there is more pressure than ever for young people to own a house and a car. It's almost a prerequisite to marriage. Even in big cities where it's unreasonable to expect a young person to be able to afford these things there is still a pressure which most often falls upon the parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is depressing that my generation is framing a forced downgrade in our quality of life as a trendy lifestyle choice.

In both the U.S. and China the economy is growing, but a greater and greater percentage of those gains go to the owners of capital. Instead of demanding a higher percentage of the product of our labor, we're content to take what we're given and downgrade our expectations.

I am a "highly paid" software engineer who works in San Francisco. Plugging in 30% of my take-home pay into Craigslist yields an anemic, depressing list of available properties. So instead of getting ripped off by some scumbag landlord, I built a tiny house in someone's back yard.

If I could afford it, I would rent something nice, or even buy a house, but _even with_ my 6-figure salary, it's not possible. And this is a _scam_.

My generation, even those of us that are getting the best deal going under Capitalism, are getting _ripped off_. and it's time we started talking about it that way instead of pretending like we're "living with less" because of some moral or ethical or lifestyle imperative.

And I should be clear -- I think Americans can stand to live with less, I think that co-housing is a legitimate option and I'd choose it if it were available to me. I also think that Americans should be seeing the benefit of increased worker productivity in their compensation, instead of 100% of that productivity increase flowing to the owners of capital.

<comment> guard-of-terra People are increasingly trying to crowd into a depressingly small and shrinking list of places. Mostly megapolises like London or hubs like SF, where they then forced to live far enough that commute takes hours and their job takes the rest. Money concentrate and people feel the need to concentrate as well.

Frankly I don't want to live that way. And I'm on my way to not to.

<comment><USER15> Forced? Dude. People move to the big city because it's where the fun happens. Sure, it's expensive, but you get what you pay for and then some.

<comment><USER16> Whether or not it's a good value is in the eye of the beholder. But it is a luxury item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "You+" has franchised the frat house.

Why not? It's the next step after "brogrammers".

</comment><comment><USER18> The big difference between this and communist living of their parents generation could be summed up in one word "hope". They live in crappy communal living nearly identical to what their parents had but for them it is temporary just until they get their big break or their startup takes off. They all dream of living in a mansion when they get rich so they have hope. For their parents the government assigned apartment was the end of the line, there was no hope of getting a better place and you just lived with it and most people hated it. So when you choose to live this way you have the choice to leave, even though you most likely wont, but it is that choice that makes it so much better

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Whoa, I too have around two pairs of shoes (for every season, grand total of maybe five) and never owned a car.

"For as little as about $500 a month, You+ residents gain access to a private room with a bathroom"

Whoa whoa, for $500 a month, I imagine you could rent a full apartment mostly anywhere in China, could not you?

Sounds like a very expensive way to own nothing.

Having said that, sharing apartments is all rage where I live. It's cheaper to rent 3 bedroom apartment and divide the price between 3-6 people than renting one bedroom flat for yourself only. In places where housing is expensive this saves young people without stellar paychecks. Company is also nice when you get to choose who to live with.

<comment> guard-of-terra "These days, he shares a bedroom with three others, each paying about $300 a month."

Now that sounds totally overpriced. Is Beijing such an expensive city already?

<comment><USER8> In my city (in Germany, even!) the housing situation isn't better.

"9m² apartment in a suburban house, on the attic – 150€/month, time limited offer of 3 months".

"11m² apartment subsidized by government, kitchen and bathroom shared with 30 other apartments, 350€/month"

Housing just is expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage)

</comment><comment><USER20> not according to the line outside your local gucci store</comment>


Text Editor Performance Comparison (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/editor-perf/readme.md <comment><USER2> This was submitted five months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13933128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13933128)

Suggestion: previous submission should be at least a year old before rehashing is allowed

<comment><USER3> I don't check HN every day, so I totally missed this. I enjoyed reading it today.

<comment><USER2> The solution maybe better ways to find old content.

But having the same links resurface over and over doesn't seem optimal to me.

<comment><USER4> There is a "past" link at under the article link that opens up agnolia search.

I'm gonna throw out the idea that it should show the number of exact url results right there without having to click it.

<comment><USER2> I thought of something along this lines, but your idea is better. I hope the mods are reading :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is from September 2016.

I'm sure many editors there have changed since then. This is true of Visual Studio Code, at least - the tests uses 1.4, way behind the current 1.14. I know the team has been spending some time doing performance improvements (e.g. 1.9 had some big improvements in highlight performance[1]) and I wonder how it compares.

1: [https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/02/08/syntax- highli...](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/02/08/syntax-highlighting- optimizations)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, for reference, VS Code had just a couple of months prior added editor tabs. The VS Code today is vastly different from the one a year ago.

<comment><USER7> The speed also increased, but I use editors due to interface and usage over any speed seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wanted to give Atom a chance since it gets stuff like ligatures right, but I find its slow startup speed to be a no-go. I simply find in Sublime a much stabler experience and faster startup time, which makes it feel more productive.

<comment><USER9> ligatures in source code? It seems as soon as I use a non-fixed width font, then indenting and other code formatting becomes tricky. Bjarne Stroustrup uses a proportional spaced font in his C++ book and I hate it.

<comment><USER8> Yes, specifically ligatures in fixed-width fonts like erik-g mentioned. My personal favorite is Hasklig[0], which is based on Source Code Pro.

[0]: [https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig)

<comment><USER9> Okay then ... does look good ... I assume that normal ascii is used under the hood and that is what the lexical analyzer sees. I am open minded -- of course it has to work with emacs -- I am not that open minded ;)

<comment><USER3> It's just a font, the underlying text is still the same no matter what font you use to render it. In fact, you could set Fira Code (or Hasklig) as the font for your terminal and (as long as your terminal app can render ligatures) it would render in emacs or any terminal-based editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I read the headline I thought it would be a link to Dan Luu's recent post [1]. Not too surprising that it was actually submitted by him!

The most amazing part of this is the JOE editor. Performance and memory aside, I'm astounded it has been maintained by the same person since 1988! [2]

[1]: [https://danluu.com/term-latency/](https://danluu.com/term-latency/) [2]: [http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/](http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see Sublime performing so well relative to Code and Atom

<comment><USER12> Hilarious to see GNU Emacs keeping its head high in the pack of "lightweight" editors.

<comment><USER13> Not really... IMO whats far more hilarious is to see an editor written in _Java_ handily beat the newer editors like Atom, Code, etc.

<comment><USER14> Think carefully about what you just posted. Java has to load the JVM. Atom and VS Code have to load _Chromium_.

<comment><USER13> Of course I know they load up a web browser but you would think that is something what Java people would do (in terms of over engineering and over use frameworks and fair game as I'm a Java developer).

I'm basing this on the original poster that thought it was funny that Emacs is fast/small. You don't think its ironic that a Java editor is small and fast given its history of being slow and bloated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was moved to try Emacs with my own test file and (somewhat to my surprise - it's normally pretty crap with long lines) it had no problem loading a 3GByte file consisting of 3,000,000 1K lines.

For short lines it's generally fine. I've never had a problem working with multi-GByte log files with 100-chars per line or so.

(Even if it's OK for text, you are probably best off avoiding very large source files - some of the major modes seem to be written assuming <100K files and/or short lines. Python mode in particular seems to bog down very easily. C mode is fine for editing, but large-scale reindents can get pretty slow. And so on.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice that you can do so much in so many editors. Luckily, Emacs had me at hello and I will never turn back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Approaching the subject another way, Pavel Fatin's excellent article Typing with Pleasure ([https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with- pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/)) goes really ( _really_ ) deep into another way in which text editor performance can be compared

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish IntelliJ was added to the list. It's a monster in comparison but it feels much faster than Code...

<comment><USER19> With 'zero-latency typing' enabled (which it is by default on current versions), IntelliJ rates well on typing lag comparisons which are probably the most consequent metric for 'feel'.

<comment><USER18> True I can't stand typing in a "text editor" only to see it lagging behind. That wasn't a thing back in DOS and that shouldn't be a thing today!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very cool. I thought Nano would perform much better..?

A problem with some fast editors might be ease of use. For instance, I would have loved to try out JOE editor, but I couldn't find builds, the code is hosted on Sourceforge, etc. etc.

I think a huge feature for an editor is usability: is there a website where I can download a build for my OS? Does it update by itself? Is it easy to configure, install plugins, etc.?

<comment><USER21> Assuming you are on a proper OS, it comes with your distribution, e.g. via Ubuntu it's just

      $ apt install joe

And it's ready (obviously you might want to configure it differently than the default).

<comment><USER22> I agree with you about a package manager being a good OS feature, but this is unnecessary snark when the two most popular operating systems don't come with a package manager (of this sort, at least).

<comment><USER23> For what it's worth, `sudo apt install joe` works fine on my windows machine. :)

<comment><USER22> Joke aside, that didn't install a Windows program, and I'm willing to bet the WSL wasn't installed by default either, and I'll also bet that didn't work in a Windows command prompt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh man I forgot about JED! It was my first editor. At the time Emacs was often too slow on my computer (circa 1995 maybe even as early as 93).

That editor was awesome and it had a cool library I think called Slang which had its own sort of ncurses implementation and scripting language (probably wrong on the details).

The author also implemented an awesome news reader back you know when people used news readers.

<comment><USER24> > At the time Emacs was often too slow on my computer (circa 1995 maybe even > as early as 93).

Recalls to mind that old joke, "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm actually sort of impressed how well JEdit performed. Other than micro its one of the only not written in a C/C++ language (the critical components... I realize emacs, code, atom, sublime all have their extension languages).

<comment><USER25> Java virtual machines generate very efficient machine code nowadays, especially for an older codebase like jEdit's that is not particularly "object oriented".

<comment><USER26> I think it would be more fair to call it object oriented. It's just not framework oriented, and that's a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. Would be really interesting to see how neovim compares.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is really cool. It would also be useful to provide a visualization of these numbers for easier scanning. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER29> why is there no good, fast, open source text editor that is user friendly like vscode but written in a low level language?

<comment><USER30> Emacs doesn't qualify? Why not?

<comment><USER31> That would be the "user friendly" part.

<comment><USER30> To each his own, I guess. I find it user friendly enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is lacking input latency unfortunately ie how long it takes for a typed character to appear.

That unsurprisingly quite critical and surprisingly variable -

[https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#input- latency](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#input-latency)

</comment><comment><USER33> Does neovim do any better than vim in any of these?

<comment><USER34> I'm wondering the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess the focus on large files has it's certainly useful in certain cases like viewing log files, data dumps, etc... but for the most part I find myself opening many many small files with less than a couple hundred lines each.

We need tools that focus on application development needs, not text editing.

</comment><comment><USER35> What is "nvi" in the tables? Neovim?

<comment><USER36> No it's the BSD clone from the nineties. Ascii only.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: UX in small companies or freelance, where to start? - <AUTHOR> I'm still learning English, please excuse.
I'm on a postgraduate training in UX. I work in a web agency as frontend developer but would like to switch into UX. It seems only large companies 200+ employees are looking for UX only people. Smaller companies are looking for UI designers or UX/UI designers.
I'm much happier in a small company or when i'm able to work for myself.
What would you recommend me? Am I missing something? <comment><USER2> Have you tried looking for a job at UX agencies? They usually have a focus and are pretty small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will try that.</comment></comment>


OECD - India has probably recently surpassed Japan to be third largest economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/economics/oecd-economic-outlook-volume-2013-issue-1_eco_outlook-v2013-1-en

<comment><AUTHOR> (Listed under second bullet point of summary on page 196 of the report)</comment>


Why in the midst of success, I'm preparing to leave the US - <AUTHOR> http://hyperborean.liberty.me/2015/02/17/why-in-the-midst-of-success-ive-decided-to-leave-the-us/

<comment><USER2> Good riddance.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Examples of SaaS Companies Adding Products? - <AUTHOR>

I always love the feedback in HN and thought of a good topic for discussion.
I am part of a startup that has been doing very well since 2007 and we are close to touching $2m in annual revenue. We are in a great position to explode next year and we are preparing now.
We will continue expanding our current product but are now starting to think about adding products for 2013/14 to maintain our growth.
Does anyone have any examples (successes and failures) of SaaS companies adding products? We see several opportunities but I would love to learn from others to compare our focus!
Thanks! Steve <comment><USER2> Salesforce? 37signals?

Expanding sideways is pretty common among successful software and business services companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Salesforce - I like the idea of Force.com being offered that uses the same infrastructure as the core product, as well as the companies they have acquired.

37signals - great example and I liked reading their timeline to see how/when they expanded. Jason is also very open on Inc.com about running the company. For some reason I recall reading an article where their adoption rates were a lot lower outside of their core product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> UserVoice?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi fezzl,

Not too familiar with the UserVoice story. What product did they start with?

Thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zoho

<comment><USER5> Shhh. Zoho is an IT Geek's best kept secret. If you tell everybody about it they might stop giving away their best stuff.</comment></comment>


I've nearly paid off $16,000 of student loan debt, but it cost me my friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ive-nearly-paid-off-student-loan-debt-but-it-cost-me-my-friends-2016-7 <comment><USER2> Refusing to socialize with your friends will cost you your friends. It's true that some people socialize by going out to bars and what not. If you don't wish to do that, you can arrange cheaper alternative.

1\. BBQ (Go to a good meat market, for $30 bucks, you could get enough meat (chicken and burger) to feed 8 people. If your friends chip in, bring a few drinks, it would cost everyone less than $10.

2\. Netflix/Movies@Home (Have everyone come over, make popcorn, drink cheap beer, watch a great movie)

3\. Games (board, card, video game)

4\. Activities (sports, hike, museum, art fair, food fest, local city music festivals)

There are tons of ways to socialize with friends for free or the cheap. Sure, some might not be into that, then so be it, you can make new ones and retain the ones that are into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Despite that, I lost about six friends amid the process. They came from more affluent backgrounds and just couldn't understand that some people have to say "no" to things so they can pay off their debts._

We're better off without "friends" like these in our lives, of course.

Really -- people like that are a major opportunity cost, and ultimately distracting you from finding the kind of people who accept you for being _you_ \-- and won't ding you for being temporarily challenged, economically.</comment>


Super Soaker creator awarded $72.9M from Hasbro - <AUTHOR> http://www.ajc.com/news/business/super-soaker-creator-awarded-729m-from-hasbro/nbjmm/#! <comment><USER2> What's interesting to me about this story in light of current events is that Johnson Research and Development Co., seems in many ways like an NPE. He doesn't make products directly, he simply licenses the patents to other companies that do make the products, and sometimes sues them.

Obviously, he's not a patent troll, but what's the bright line between what he does and what a patent troll does? This is a critical question in the patent troll discussion, because it is absolutely the case that every Intellectual Ventures, Lodsys, and Rockstar thinks of themselves as being innovative inventors like Lonnie Johnson. They'll hold independent inventors like him up whenever legislation is proposed and say that it'll hurt good old-fashioned American invention, and maybe they'll even be right.

It's critical that there be a clear division there, or else reform will never go through, or worse, end up hurting actual inventors. How can that line be drawn?

<comment><USER3> He invented a real (specific) product with prototypes and everything, licensed that product to a real manufacturer who then made it, gained lots of money, and then stiffed him on the payment they promised.

Trolls would have produced no toy at all, for anyone, kept the whole process a secret, and then sued every child who ever flung water at another at a birthday party.

"Its the difference between using a feather and using a chicken." You know it when you see it.

Edit: Just for clarity, its the direction the arrow points. Lonnie Johnson created a product and then went out and sought a company to _start_ producing it. Trolls do it backwards, they go out and find companies that are _already_ producing it and then threaten them with forcing them to _stop_.

<comment><USER4> What about the hypothetical scenario where Hasbro tells him to get lost, then rips off his design and produces the stuff anyway?

As far as I can tell, this scenario is _very_ difficult to distinguish from a patent troll. The only real differentiator is whether or not the patent is actually a novel invention or whether it's just the "click a button on the internet" kind of crap that so many of these things end up being.

<comment><USER5> Don't most patent trolls purchase or license the patents they are suing with as opposed to actually filing them? That seems like a pretty big distinction.

<comment><USER6> If this Lonnie guy would sell his patents to somebody else, and they would sue Hasbro, would that make them 'patent trolls' then?

Or what about if he dies and his children sue Hasbro? Does that make them 'patent trolls'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HN should start having a "hacker of the week" or something, notable people to admire and inspire. We could start with Lonnie Johnson.

<comment><USER8> I was just about to suggest an AMA with him, but then I realized .. HN doesn't do that. Or does it? (Haven't noticed)

Either way, Mr. Johnson certainly appears to be the kind of engineer a lot of people aspire to be .. On one end of the spectrum, a kids toy. On the other end of the spectrum: multiple successful space probes. Yikes! The guys kicks ass!

<comment><USER9> HN goes about AMAs by getting them to post here. Then people ask them random questions whenever they want. There's no focused idea of an AMA. I think because there's very little celebrity worship on HN compared to other sites. People here tend to look at others' accomplishments and say, "I can do that."

<comment><USER8> > I think because there's very little celebrity worship on HN compared to > other sites.

Glad you added the qualifier "compared to other sites" there .. because I see a lot of hero worship on HN. (Steve Jobs, Paul Graham, &etc.) However it seems to be a lot less robotic.

I hope we can one day get Mr. Johnson to answer a few questions - I agree with other commenters that he is indeed an inspiration and it'd be great for my kids to know more about him. Oops, there I go, creating a hero to worship .. ;)

<comment><USER10> I find that HN has a slightly different version of worship. Posts by some folks such as PG get auto-voted to the top, but at the same time quite often the replies to the post are far different than on other sites. To use PG as an example I've often found that replies to his posts that make it to the top are well thought out disagreements/counterpoints which instigates further discussion. On the other hand, disagreeing with an AMA response on reddit gets you downvoted into oblivion unless the reddit hive mind already hates the AMAer.

<comment><USER11> > Posts by some folks such as PG get auto-voted to the top

My understanding of HN's sorting is that it takes into account the average karma of a poster's past comments and includes that in the weighting. Given that, it's not surprising that pg and others are always at the top (and it's a bit of a self-perpetuating system for power users).

<comment><USER8> Yes, this self-perpetuation of platforms for power users business does indeed create 'meritocracy and value' of the readers attention and time. But then again, in many cases, it does not. When I broach the subject personally, I feel that HN works for me because it seems to promote more for 'the idea of the successful action/techno hero' rather than any particular individual, but then again all Internet forums promote the Archetype that they attract. Which is to say that any particular word, itself, that we put out there on the Internet, eventually collates with other 'words', 'subjects', 'forms', and so on .. forming what we have. Perhaps I am responding more the language of the hero in the HN/reddit zeitgeist, also, the banal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ha, awesome to know that the Super Soaker came from such a brilliant inventor and businessman! Lots of good memories with those things...

As a kid I hacked my own extra powerful version using a bicycle frame pump, soda bottles, pvc pipe, copper tubing and brass valves, and ruled the neighborhood "battlefield" for a summer :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure much has been written about the inventor, Lonnie Johnson, already, but if he were a young kid today -- or, perhaps, had more coverage for inventing a billion dollar toy -- he'd be as revered as Elon Musk by HN, for being both a rich entrepreneur and an esteemed hacker. From the OP:

> _Johnson, a nuclear engineer, Tuskegee University Ph.D. and former NASA > scientist, founded his company in 1989. It was the same year he first > licensed the Super Soaker, which generated more than $200 million in retail > sales two years later, the company said. The toy was licensed to Larami > Corp., which was later purchased by Hasbro._

> _Johnson holds more than 80 patents, with more than 20 pending, the company > said, which said sales of the Super Soaker have approached nearly $1 > billion._

> _As an Alabama high school senior, Johnson finished building a remote- > controlled robot with a reel-to-reel tape player for a brain and jukebox > solenoids controlling its pneumatic limbs, according to a 2008 profile in > the Atlanta Journal Constitution._

edit: This 2001 NYT profile is even more fascinating:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/31/science/engineer-at- play-l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/31/science/engineer-at-play-lonnie- johnson-rocket-science-served-up-soggy.html?pagewanted=all)

> _In the late 1970 's, he worked at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in > Albuquerque, overseeing the safety of projects involving space nuclear > power._

> _In 1979, he moved to California and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an > aerospace mecca._

> _There his nuclear skills helped integrate an atomic power plant into > Galileo, a $1.6 billion spacecraft destined to study Jupiter and its 16 > moons. It needed an atomic battery because sunlight would be too weak there > to power solar panels._

> _David M. Durham, a spacecraft engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, > recalled that Mr. Johnson was known not only for professional excellence but > for testing his wife 's patience with his moonlighting._

> _' 'At one point, his wife nearly threw him out of the house because all he > did was tinker,'' he said. After minor successes with inventions, he added, > Mr. Johnson finally ''came up with one that allowed him to no longer have to > work for anybody.''_

> _It happened in 1982 while Mr. Johnson was working at home on a new kind of > cooling device. At that time, refrigerators often used Freon, a gas that > destroys the earth 's ozone layer. He envisioned one that ran on water. It > would not only be efficient but would also be environmentally friendly._

<comment><USER14> I learned about Lonnie when I read his patent on the super soaker. Huge respect.

<comment><USER15> Patent #5,074,437. Can be found here: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5074437.PN.&OS=PN/5074437&RS=PN/5074437)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was curious how the Super Soaker worked, and came across this great summary from How Stuff Works:

[http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/water- blaster3.htm](http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/water-blaster3.htm) [http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/water- blaster4.htm](http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/water-blaster4.htm)

<comment><USER17> As a kid, I knew what the back tank did just based on observation. I am so glad I learned that I knew about 50% of how it actually worked. TIL this was a great simple design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's very interesting that everyone appears to unanimously agree that Johnson is not a patent troll, but it's hard to figure out exactly why.

People said it's because he made a legitimate product. From what I can see, Johnson Research and Development Co. never shipped a single Super Soaker -- 100% of their revenue is from licensing.

People said it's because he had a licensing agreement first. What if Larami had refused to sign a licensing agreement with him in the first place, ripped off his design, and he'd had to resort to a suit to get paid?

People said that it's because Hasbro explicitly used his design as a starting point. What if they invented their own water guns after seeing his prototype at a trade show, and then thumbed their nose at him? What if they "independently" invented their own water gun without seeing his? If you're telling me that there's a difference between these two cases, then you're saying that the courts need to determine intent and foreknowledge. What if someone from Hasbro was at the trade show where he exhibited, but just claimed not to have seen his booth? What if he had approached Hasbro for a license, and they claimed that their internal team was not aware of those discussions?

People said it's because he is the original inventor. What if he'd despaired of ever beating Hasbro in court and licensed his patent to Acacia so that they could go after Hasbro?

Finally, people are saying that the problem is that the inventions of patent trolls are "obvious". Is putting a battery-powered pump in a water gun a non- obvious invention worthy of patent protection? Batteries, pumps and water guns all existed before this -- what's the innovation here?

<comment><USER19> _Is putting a battery-powered pump in a water gun a non-obvious invention worthy of patent protection? Batteries, pumps and water guns all existed before this -- what 's the innovation here?_

This is an excellent question. Let me offer a possible answer.

It seems to me that the very fact that batteries, pumps, and water guns had all existed for some time, and yet nobody until Johnson thought to put them together, in itself constitutes evidence that the idea was nonobvious.

It seems to me that a lot of the problem patents we have seen in recent years involve relatively new technologies. For example, once we had low-cost scanners, and once file transmission by email became common, scan-to-email was an obvious idea. But it wasn't _so_ obvious that one of the first people to think of it (almost certainly not the very first) wasn't able to obtain a patent on it. Therein, I think, lies the problem: when a new technology shows up, the PTO simply has no way to know what applications of it count as obvious -- it hasn't been around long enough for the obvious ones to have been thought of already.

Under such circumstances the PTO should be very careful about granting patents. I think a reasonable guideline would be that once a new technology begins to be widely used, the PTO should assume that any idea that simply combines the new technology with existing techniques, or applies it to well- known problems in a straightforward way, is obvious. This would have ruled out all the "X, but on the Internet" patents we have seen go by.

As I have written previously, a deeper problem with our system is this. A patent is a trade: we give the inventor a time-limited monopoly in exchange for disclosure of the invention. But there's no one unambiguously charged with making sure we got a good deal: that the value of the disclosure outweighs the cost of the monopoly. While this is technically the PTO's responsibility, its management and incentive structures aren't set up with this goal paramount. This pushes the problem to the courts; but the courts tend to defer to the PTO's judgment. So really, there's nobody minding the store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope it helps him build his JTEC thingy - [http://www.parc.com/event/713/high-efficiency-solid-state- en...](http://www.parc.com/event/713/high-efficiency-solid-state-engine.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> This story seems very similar to the universal wrench story here: [http://abcnews.go.com/US/MadeInAmerica/wrench-inventor- claim...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/MadeInAmerica/wrench-inventor-claims-sears- stole-idea-china/story?id=17720122)

It seems to be a disturbing trend where large companies get into business agreements with small time inventors, then do everything possible to screw them out of royalties by creating cheap knock-off products with trivial differences.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Johnson also wanted the court to force Hasbro to open its books to determine sales of Super Soaker products from 2006 to 20012._

That's a lot of sales they're disputing :-p

</comment><comment><USER23> I remember first seeing a Super Soaker in a Toys 'R Us sometime in 1991 (I think), and thinking 'That's genius'. I'm glad to know the guy who made it 'got paid'.

</comment><comment><USER24> Who do these corporate conglomerates think they are by trying to con inventors from their due? This happens all too often. These corporations love to lord their patents over everyone else but refuse to pay up when it is clear they not only have a legal obligation, but a moral one as well.

Note, Robert Kearns, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns).</comment>


A quarter of Americans are hesitant about a coronavirus vaccine - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-exclu/exclusive-a-quarter-of-americans-are-hesitant-about-a-coronavirus-vaccine-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN22X19G <comment><USER2> Despite all the water cooler conversations about "immunity passports," their usefulness is hard to envision for several reasons. It's a lot easier to imagine institutions requiring employees to provide proof of immunization instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> what's wrong with the other 3/4? Unless I was at major risk from Covid, I'd never do it unless it was tested for many years. No, I'm not anti-vaccine

<comment><USER4> I personally perceive vaccination as a moral duty. For many vaccines nowadays (polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, rubella,etc), the chance to get the disease is lower than the chance to have a severe allergic reaction. For example, according to the CDC, the US has been polio free starting in 1979, but the chance of a severe allergic reaction to the polio vaccine is about 1 in 1 million. Why would you take a 10^(-6) risk to counter a zero risk? Because if you don't, and nobody else does, we lose the herd immunity and polio makes a comeback, and we are all worse off. Classic prisoner dilemma. Nature's way of solving prisoner's dilemma is morality. If something feels immoral to you, it's an underlying evolutionary solution to a prisoner's dilemma problem.

So here we are. I will personally take the Covid19 vaccine when it becomes available, knowing that I trade a smaller risk for a larger one, but also knowing that if everyone does the same we are all better off.

<comment><USER5> Just commenting so people scanning don't miss the logical error.

You're comparing established vaccines with an untested one, so your argument doesn't make any sense.

> Why would you take a 10^(-6) risk to counter a zero risk?

Nobody knows the risk of a new vaccine in advance.

We're more likely to reach herd immunity before a vaccine is approved, sooner the better.

<comment><USER4> > with an untested one

Not sure where you got the idea that the Covid19 vaccines will not be tested. On the contrary, they will be the most tested and scrutinized vaccines in history. Even now you can find countless articles/blog posts explaining every little detail of the progress of the testing so far. In a few months there will be even more. Then the FDA will give the Emergency Use Authorization, and millions of people will be vaccinated under that. By the time the FDA provides the actual approval, there will hundreds of times more testing data than for other vaccines. There will be enough data to have statistical power to identify side effects with a prevalence rate of 1 in 100k or 1 in 1 million.

>We're more likely to reach herd immunity before a vaccine is approved, sooner the better.

That's possible. That doesn't mean we won't need a vaccine. Herd immunity diminishes in time, and then you have new bouts of the disease. This virus will not simply go away. The only way for it to be wiped out, like the smallpox virus was, is to have a very determined vaccination campaign.

<comment><USER5> credit_guy: you're either a shill, or overly trusting.

There have been several medications in US history that turned out very badly, like thalidomide.

And Emergency Use Authorization implies less testing, not more.

> The only way for it to be wiped out, like the smallpox virus was, is to have > a very determined vaccination campaign.

I disagree. Around 5% of the population has had corona and survived. They seem to be doing fine.

Sounds like you're one of those guys who believes everything you read, and thinks hope is a strategy, and a short-term one at that. That's the second epidemic - hope is not a strategy.

<comment><USER4> > either a shill, or overly trusting

Not a shill. A company that makes a successful Covid19 vaccine will make many billions in profits. They don't need shills on Hacker News.

Overly trusting I may be. I am certainly an idealistic guy, who believes in benefit of doubt, innocent until proven guilty, life, liberty, happiness and all that.

> Emergency Use Authorization implies less testing, not more.

That's correct, I never said it implies more testing.

However, all vaccine companies will move to secure full approval after the EUA phase. At that point, there will be tons of testing data available to the FDA, data that's not normally available for other vaccines, for the simple thing that the EUA concept exists only during emergencies like this one.

I don't think anyone should feel obligated to do the vaccine during the EUA period, when the risk will arguably be higher. However, once the full approval is granted, then the vaccine will be, if anything, safer than your annual flu shot, for example.

Did you know that among the flu shots offered for the current season (2019-20), one was approved as recently as 2017 [1]? For all I know in 2017 I may have taken this then brand new vaccine. I didn't care to ask, and I won't care to ask in the future. In my mind, if the CDC recommends the population to get a vaccine, and the vaccine is available at my local pharmacy, then I'll go ahead and just do it.

> thinks hope is a strategy.

This is a head-scratcher. What exactly made you believe I consider hope to be a strategy? Advocating for a vaccination campaign is the opposite of "hope as a strategy", wont' you think?

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/qa_flublok- vaccine.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/qa_flublok-vaccine.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> that doesn't yet exist? lol.

</comment><comment><USER7> Amusingly if Trump says it's safe, less people are willing to take it.</comment>


Krispy Kreme strikes deal with kid who drives 250 miles to resell its doughnuts - <AUTHOR> https://www.wfsb.com/krispy-kreme-strikes-deal-with-college-kid-who-drives-miles/article_c09a7527-8224-56bd-a570-b4c89d70701f.html <comment><USER2> I grew up in Minnesota, and Krispy Kreme was legendary while they had stores here. Schools and workplaces would commonly bring in hot, freshly-baked donuts to motivate students and employees.

And then Krispy Kreme left the state. After that, it became common for university students to do fundraisers where they drive to the nearest out-of- state Krispy Kreme to fulfill orders. Of course, now the donuts are not hot after the 250-mile drive, but the brand is still very powerful.

I just don't understand why Krispy Kreme doesn't open just ONE store in Minneapolis. Maybe we don't have the demand to fulfill one hundred stores, but only having one store would be clearly profitable.

<comment><USER3> they probably don't want to deal with the supply chain logistics of supplying a single store in the state.

<comment><USER4> This is the sort of calculus that's prevented White Castle from expanding westward for so long. They just last week opened their first family-owned location west of the Mississippi, in Scottsdale, and they claimed they were only comfortable doing that because the two franchised locations in Vegas had forced their supply chain hand enough that they would be able to piggy back off of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article for those of us in Europe.

[https://outline.com/CaUjCw](https://outline.com/CaUjCw)

<comment><USER6> Just what I needed, Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> All this really shows is that public pressure can affect a company's policy choices.

<comment><USER8> I am just bothered by the idea that the common folk have to explicitly police these corporations to do the right thing. This kind of justice allows people to risk bad policies just because they might, on the off-chance, get away.

<comment><USER9> In this case, its us telling the corporation that we don't think they have liability for a guy reselling their product.

Liability is used as a boogyman in corporate american to squash all sorts of good and bad ideas.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately it's a very real boogeyman in the US.

"The U.S. has the highest liability costs as a percentage of GDP of the countries surveyed, with liability costs at 2.6 times the average level of the Eurozone economies"

[https://www.instituteforlegalreform.com/uploads/sites/1/ILR_...](https://www.instituteforlegalreform.com/uploads/sites/1/ILR_NERA_Study_International_Liability_Costs- update.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another indictment of our bizarre, inequitable society masquerading as a feel- good story.

<comment><USER12> Yeah seriously. Drop this garbage in the same file with all those stories about communities who came together to cover someone's insane medical bills or outrageous legal defense.

<comment><USER13> Are you being sarcastic? Or are you saying that not having local access to a particular brand of doughnuts is the same hardship and moral travesty as having to pay a crippling medical bill?

<comment><USER14> He's saying these feel good stories only exist because of terrible situations to begin with. The company C&Ded him but after public backlash changed that heart. The hospital gave a patient an $800k medical bill after the insurance company refused to put her baby on the insurance but they magically could after publicity. The ability to get publicity and bad press should not be the arbiter of fair treatment, fair treatment should be the norm not the outlier.

<comment><USER13> > terrible situations

Not being able to get your preferred doughnut?

<comment><USER15> No, cutting that guy's source of income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me or is Krispy Kreme really trigger happy with its lawyers? I only have two points of data - this and Froggy Fresh.

But still, are there any companies out that that don't care to fire off petty lawsuits when people use their name or resell their product at small scales?

Like, if I made a unicorn called "Hukino" and then 10 years later some YouTuber used that as his rapper name or some college students made "HukinoOS" or someone started reselling my widgets in the arctic... would it kill my company if I just ignored them? Is there a precedent of a company not aggressively protecting its IP getting screwed over?

I'm just trying to imagine a world where companies like Nintendo don't instantly axe projects like Chrono Resurrection/Pokemon Uranium/AM2R/etc. because that's the kind of world I want to live in.

<comment><USER17> I mean, there are the famous cases of Xerox and Kleenex. They're what led to the current situation. I can't think of any more recent examples, though. Probably because of lawyers trained on those results.

<comment><USER16> I would argue that still happens though when a product becomes ubiquitous.

Read: "Don't say Velcro" campaign

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They are giving him 500 dozen donuts. He is charging up to $20 per a dozen. That is $10k right there!

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm happy for the kid and surprised KK didn't see the backlash coming but there's also something that makes me a little uneasy about this. Deciding not to sell in a market seems like a totally reasonable decision and it seems just a little too easy to exploit social media blowback for individual profit.

</comment><comment><USER20> When I go to Portland, my friends bug me to get some voodoo doughnuts. Its a common thing in Seattle to portland trips to pick some up for people.

<comment><USER21> The real pros know that Blue Star makes the superior fried pastry, just sayin' ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They just wanted a cut of the sales. I doubt he is making 10 bucks a dozen anymore

<comment><USER23> If he bought them and resold them, don't they already get a cut since he has to buy them in the first place?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Shut down operations"...or what?

<Laughs in First Sale Doctrine>

</comment><comment><USER25> By 21 years old I think you're no longer a "kid".

In any case it seems like he needed the money to pay for college so he ran a side hustle. The only thing that's remarkable here is, when found out, he used social media to turn it into a PR issue which in turn forced Krispy Kreme to deal with it on PR terms rather than legal ones.

<comment><USER26> > By 21 years old I think you're no longer a "kid".

Neurological development continues well into your twenties. I don't know what it means to be a 'kid', but someone in college seems like kid could still be reasonable depending on context.

<comment><USER27> Sure, but I don't think this publication was thinking about that. Call me jaded, but I feel like they were more thinking "hey can we call him a kid to get more page impressions?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Because apparently no other bakeries existed locally and produced donuts.

It's dough and sugar, the name on the box is meaningless.

<comment><USER29> Do pepsi and coke taste the same? Are all soft drinks interchangable?

I don't really care about this, but Krispy Kreme donuts taste much better than Dunkin Donuts.

<comment><USER28> If you show me someone who buys coke at twice the price because they don't like Pepsi I'll show you a fucking moron.

<comment><USER30> I won't pay twice the price (disregarding that the restaurant price is probably _already_ twice the price of getting it at Costco), but I may just grab a water.

<comment><USER31> FWIW I think fountain soda costs less than $0.25 a serving, the restaurant markup on soda is way bigger than most people realize</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free Cyber Security Awareness Posters for /r/sysadmin (no watermark or logos) - <AUTHOR> Hi All, We have a few free posters available for anyone running a security awareness campaign. No watermarks, logos or licensing! Also, they look good if you move the title text down and insert your companies logo. http://imgur.com/a/OtqPO <comment><AUTHOR> [http://imgur.com/a/OtqPO](http://imgur.com/a/OtqPO)</comment>


Raspberry Pi Zero grows a camera connector - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/zero-grows-camera-connector/ <comment><USER2> With a camera connector, the Pi Zero is finally a full replacement for the A+ in all the projects that I've done/have in mind. Since it has full GPIO without a header, it's actually easier for me to wire things up in a more compact way for specific projects.

And since it's $5, I worry a lot less about sticking these things in areas where moisture, temperature, and potential-for-getting-snagged-by-a-kid are slight concerns.

For the immediate future, I hope to get one and use the adapter cable to stick in a small box with a camera for a plug-and-play time-lapse camera. Basically, add a knob that sets the interval on the side, then plug in a battery or plug into microSD, and it will start dropping pictures on the microSD card until it's powered off. Great for construction, dusty, or outdoor environments!

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested to see how well it works. I did something similar (a camera trap) with the model B and the problem I ran into is that the unit would often overheat and shut down if left in an enclosure in the sun. I didn't want to use active cooling, as the noise might scare away animals. I think the model A or a Zero would work better.

<comment><USER4> What were you running to grab the images? Where you processing with motion or something of the sort? Anything else running on the model B?

I ask because I have about one dozen Raspberry Pis (Model B, B+, and I think on of the latest one?) working as webcams. Yet I snap one photo per minute... and one 60 second video every 10-15 minutes. They rsync off-site.

And they're all running in a security camera housing, under the sun/rain/shine, in front of beaches, inside a ziplock bag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cunning and small, yet elusive like Bigfoot. I can't seem to find one at a reasonable cost.

<comment><USER6> On the blog he they stated production of the Pi Zeros had to be delayed to build up the Raspberry Pi 3's. Now that the initial surge of Raspberry Pi 3's is done, they stated they will build "thousands a day" until demand is met.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure "thousands a day" will ever even clear the backlog of people waiting to get their first much less keep up with the latent demand of people who would buy a handful once they knew they could reliably get them for use in projects.

You can claim 1000's (as in 2) and still not even make 3/4 million per year.

<comment><USER8> Is the backlog really in the millions? That would be impressive.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, when they shipped first raspberrys the demand was in millions. Now because Zero is so small and cheap, everyone who needed pi for tinkering will order several zeros, including me. The only thing which prevented me from getting one was lack of camera connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very happy to see the camera connector.

Anyone interested in the exact stock count figures? [http://stockalert.alexellis.io/](http://stockalert.alexellis.io/) along with full source-code and blog write-up on how it works.

</comment><comment><USER11> We have a very small run project (tens) we plan to integrate the zero into, but have yet to be able to get our hands on one to even dev with, and are at the point where we are reconsidering the decision.

While it's nice to see improvements to the board, I'd love improvement in the supply chain.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's still baffling to me that we give Raspberry Pi all this credit for making a $5 computer when there is nowhere you can actually exchange $5 for this $5 computer and it has remained that way since launch.

Being reliably in stock at the alleged price isn't a nice-to-have side benefit, it's the _only thing there is_ when you claim to have vastly reduced the price of something.

Unless someone can point to a US distributor who actually has one of these things in stock for $5, color me unimpressed.

</comment><comment><USER13> The stock situation is disappointing. They could've launched it a few dollars higher, and they'd still get the same demand with easier ramp-up.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow. So the camera is now 5x more expensive than the computer. Perhaps some day we'll get a less expensive camera.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can you do some image-processing on the images captured from the camera, in realtime? For example: motion detection, or image enhancement or some filtering? I'm asking if the CPU is powerful enough to do a pass over the image in 30ms... or if not in 30ms, how long would edge-detection take on a Zero, on a full HD image?

<comment><USER16> Yes, you can. There are even tutorials for doing things like motion detection:

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/turn-your-pi-into-a-low- cos...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/turn-your-pi-into-a-low-cost-hd- surveillance-cam/)

However, for the really fancy stuff, you probably wanna look into programming for the VPU, which has some pretty decent muscle behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're trying keep mfg in the UK and the unit price-volumes are too low (they're likely playing super conservative with their orders).

There are other elephants in the room as well...

</comment><comment><USER18> Is that the third type of camera connector that the RPi designers have used already? Or is it the same one used on the compute module development boards?

<comment><USER19> I thought that they all ("all", excluding prototype hardware) used the same physical connector (a 15-pin ZIF connector). As far as data lanes and such, I'd assume that the Pi-Zero will take its cues from the non-compute-module Pi's and run 2 lanes of data on interface 1.

edit: Ah, OK. So it's a fine-pitch side-mount connector. I didn't realize that it actually uses different hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So that means new Pi Zero batches will ship with the connector on the main board? (as opposed to connector-less earlier batches?)

Like a new version of the same hardware?

<comment><USER21> This update adds a camera connector. The GPIO header is still not populated on the board. This is actually great for those who plan on soldering different kinds of connectors (right angle, female, bottom-mounted, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> sold out everywhere

<comment><USER10> Check the site I posted. Can you order from the UK?

<comment><USER23> Your site is reporting a lot of units available but clicking thru to the vendors shows only bundle offers, not the device alone. It would be great if your site could distinguish between those.

<comment><USER10> All the single units go within the first day or few hours of the stock being available. The packaged sets pimoroni have are good value for money if you can use the additional pHATs. I've used the scroll/explorer/dac pHAT.

Someone raised a PR on my todo list to breakdown by category.. it would be more fragile - maybe done better through the Shopify API, negotiate an access key with the store etc etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are we in the middle of yet another tech bubble? - <AUTHOR> I'm just gathering opinions, do you think we are in a tech bubble, and why? <comment><USER2> No but we are in an valuation bubble.

Tech is still generally underrated compared to it's importance for society but there is a whole suite of primarily Silicon Valley funded companies whos valuation is based on it's investors alternative views of what value is.

<comment><USER3> I am begging for downvotes here, but I have to be that guy for a second...."it's", with an apostrophe, is a contraction of "it is."

You're looking for "its," which is a possessive adjective.

<comment><USER4> I think errors like this are usually a muscle-mind error, not a misunderstanding error. I very frequently type "you're" when what I said in my head was "your". Sometimes I send/post before I notice the mistake.

<comment><USER5> The crazy one I do a lot (and usually notice after I can no longer edit) is "know" instead of "no", which is definitely a muscle-mind problem; it's not like I think "know" means "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not overall. There may be a bubble in certain small areas of tech, but there is nothing happening right now that equals the mania of the late 1990s.

I was there, and nope. Totally different economy and culture. To have a bubble like that you need optimism, and I have never in my lifetime seen a greater sense of hopelessness and pessimism and anger. Outside of coastal alpha cities like SF, NYC, Boston, LA, etc., the mega-recession of 2008 onward did not end. There is no hope, no opportunity, and everything is rising but wages. I've spoken to people who were older in the 70s and early 80s and some have compared it to then, but I have a friend who remembers the 70s well and he insists this is worse.

We may be in a sort of bubble, but it's not centered on tech or specific to tech. We are at a time in history where unprecedented amounts of money are sloshing around at the top and it isn't 'trickling down' much via ordinary routes like wages. As a result, there is perhaps something like a bubble in the sorts of assets that kind of wealth imbalance inflates: real estate, bonds, stocks, and yes perhaps other forms of investments rich people buy like private equity.

If there's a bubble in angel or VC activity, it's a shadow of that larger imbalance rather than something centered on tech in particular. There's a ridiculous amount of money at the top that doesn't know where to go, and some of that is going to be available to inflate startup valuations among many other things.

<comment><USER7> Shame that comments like these are being downvoted.

<comment><USER8> I upvoted it. Why is it getting downvoted, I wonder? Seems like a fairly rational explanation.

Is it just because of the negative tone? I mean, this post is asking for opinions, and the commenter simply gave his opinion....

<comment><USER9> This whole anti-"negativity" thing is just an attempt to impose Bay Area passive-aggressive culture on every participant in the discussion, even though we "in tech" come from (and ought to come from) all over the world.

It makes me fucking sick that people get downvoted for expressing unpleasant but completely accurate accounts of what is actually going on.

<comment><USER10> I think you're making an enormous intellectual leap from the data you have (someone with greater than 500 karma clicked a glyph of an inverted pyramid).

api's answer is the most complete response to the question so far.

<comment><USER11> Not really, api's comment is currently one of the last in this thread, which means that it has a low karma. On the other hand, it is likely that several people upvoted it - I did, and probably people who complain that it was downvoted also upvoted it, which means that it got several downvote - something not attributable to bad luck.

<comment><USER10> When I made that comment, there were 3 others in the thread. Next time I'll put a timestamp to add context (I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely recognized the ambiguity)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was going to say no, but the top story on HN right now is a simple web app for measuring mood, which anyone could have been built in about 10 minutes using SurveyMonkey or Formstack. So, if that's noteworthy innovation, maybe we in a bubble.

<comment><USER13> So the appearance of a non-funded side-project app has caused you to change your view of the entire industry in the last 5 minutes?

<comment><USER12> The project is fine, it's more about it being voted to the top of HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The ironic part about bubbles is that, necessarily, +80% of people believe we're not in a bubble just before it pops. After all, this is the primary reason for a bubble. This means that asking people if we're in a bubble is sort of a measure of the inverse.

It is possible that we are just below the top of the 8 (not 7) year cycle (see my explanation boom / bust cycles @ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565624)).

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a good point

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't personally believe we're in a tech bubble like we saw in the late 90s. At worst the general public isn't at the same risk as we had with all the .com IPOs. There's a lot less liquidity which means that angels and VCs would take a much larger hit.

This presentation from Lou Kerner has some good insights. [http://www.slideshare.net/loukerner/bubble- cartoon](http://www.slideshare.net/loukerner/bubble-cartoon)

<comment><USER16> "There's a lot less liquidity"

The entire sequence of events since 2009 has been driven by artificial liquidity support. While consumers may not have acess to credit, VCs are overflowing with cash, and so are many other types of high-net worth and institutional money sources. This creates an odd and un-even playing field, and I think your comment may simply be revealing the view of one hand on the elephant rather than an objective assessment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like everyone is worried. It's possible that many of us reading this could lose our jobs if there's a large crash.

Maybe I should start saving up and make a back up plan for life outside tech. But I have none. Ah well , that's life.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you think today is anything like the 90's then you weren't there.

<comment><USER19> 90s: 3.5 million shares in Netscape for a few 100 million... although only the beginning, that is modest compared to today.

As another commentator pointed out... valuation vs price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd say it's more of a froth. Some areas are depressed (relatively), some are about right on target, and some are way overvalued.

In a bubble lots of people become sudden "royalty", but in a froth, only a select few are made into kings.

It's clear that "valuation", as term, is not indicative of the value a company provides/produces, or the market it serves. It's a kind of shared fantasy.

What we keep seeing is that companies with grossly inflated valuations end up M&A'd into a more mature company, and the value that company had is corrected over a couple years to be some fraction of the purchase price.

There's also little longevity for many of these companies. An unmonetized cat picture sharing app gets "valued" at $billions because it's hit some kind of faddish meme growth curve, is bought be Yahoo! or whomever, and then turns to vapor within 6 months. The acquiring companies don't even have enough time to insert their ad network monetization scheme onto the pages before the curve turns upside down.

Meanwhile, the founders of the site are sitting on piles of cash, and go on to angel invest in other bad faddish ideas that have a monetizable life-span of 12 months.

Or other startups form that _require_ as their monetization strategy, for some non-trivial percentage of all humans on the _planet_ to be using their service before they can start skimming profit off of operating expenses. They hit 85% of those metrics, sell or IPO for the GDP of a medium sized European country and everybody is surprised when they have monetization problems.

The Startup->Invest->Value->Sell cycle is broken in several subtle places and it's not clear how to fix it other than for investors to just get smarter and/or have other investment vehicles available to them. Or at least start asking for startups to "start up" with a good business plan in place, and carefully evaluate it for nonsense. But this won't happen so long as the cycle as broken. Uninformed investors, who were trained on what success looks like from their own ridiculous lark of a company fundamentally don't know what a real company looks like.

Meanwhile there are other companies with real ideas, making real money, who are struggling to get valuations at 1xrevenue.

Like anything with money involved, tech startups have become a hit-driven industry, and over the long-term (10-20 years) this is generally bad for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER21> We are in a global asset bubble, not specifically a tech bubble. People like to highlight tech valuations because the general public is familiar with the companies.

Click Bait Headline: "COMPANY WITH NO PROFIT WORTH $1.5 BILLION, THE END IS NIGH!"

The valuations are divorced from the future earnings of most of the companies, but so are real estate prices in many cities around the world. So sure, we're in a "tech bubble" but its all part of a shared economic fantasy so it probably doesn't matter.

<comment><USER22> The perception of the valuations is likewise divorced from the risks associated with the investment. That $150 million for 10% that made the $1.5 billion valuation comes with a liquidation preference, and if the company liquidates for $300 million, the first $150 million (50%) goes to that investor with only 10%. That's not suggesting that 0% return is a success, but it's a lot better than losing $150 million.

From a VC standpoint, liquidation preference lowers the downside risks and while the high valuation makes a 100x homerun return less likely, that's not really the goal of a series D. A potential 10x with a good chance of catching any downside in the liquidation preference is not a dumb investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wouldn't call it a bubble because bubbles burst all at once. Tech does have value, and some tech companies are actually creating value and seem to be worth every penny of their valuation. I'm talking about the Übers and AirBnBs. I would call it a Gold Rush; everyone thinks if they show up with their pickaxe, they're gonna strike it rich.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not until I hear some friends and family start talking about investing in tech startups again.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd say we are.

One definition of a bubble that my colleges use is an external force that artificially props up values, or put another way a force that if it was removed would see prices crash.

Now consider silicon valley, what happens when a 2001 scenario happens and venture capital money dries up. Ask your self the question, if there was no vc money tomorrow would valuations remain the same, probably not.

Now that's not entirely fair as vc money won't just all go away, but then ask is there more vc money now that before, the answer is yes to to tune of about 5x-10x(estimates differ) more than there was in 1999.

So a more realistic question would be to ask what happens if we removed 5x-10x the funding that we currently have, would prices go down?

The startup market looks alot like the junk bond market in the Milken days. Junk bonds are very risky bonds but they can pay out alot and as long as there is money to roll the debt over into new debt everyone is happy. However, if the market gets jitters then suddenly you go from a scenario where everyone can roll their debt to a scenario where almost no one except for hte "best" junk bonds can get rolled( similar to getting vc in 2001-2004).

ie a bubble doesn't go down gradually, it goes down hard.

Another scary thing for valuations that doesn't get enough air time is the percentage of gains made when a company is private vs when its public. I saw a great tweet when Larry Ellison retired that said something to the effect of final score Oracle shares up 32,000% since it when public. It will be hard for a facebook to return that kind of return to investors over the next 25 years.

It used to be the case that the public markets got alot more of the stock gains than they are getting now. This should scare people as its the public markets that give companies their valuations. If the public markets find that stocks aren't going to have the 20 year gains that they used to have, then money, being like water, will flow to where it can make better gains, which will depress public market prices, which in turn, will push down private market valuations.

This isnt' a short term trend but one to watch, over the next 10 years. I know of a few macro based funds that are very concerned about this.

 __BONUS off the cuff prediction __

We will see a private company start to pay dividends rather than go public in the next 3 years.

TL/DR \- private markets value growth, public markets value profits. You've hit a bubble when you have the largest private companies not being able to produce profits that the public markets expect. Once that happens everything gets "messed up" with the chain of:

\- the largest private companies can't go public at their expected valuations leading to

\- lower valuations for private companies, leading to

\- existing companies not being able to get teh vc capital they were expecting, leading to

\- private companies going out of business, leading to

\- vc losses, leading to less vc money in the system, leading to

\- a "virtuous" cycle that deflates the bubble.

</comment><comment><USER26> I do not think we are in tech bubble at least for another 5 years. We have real new products coming one after another across multiple domains like AR, VR, self driving cars, drones and what not.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1) From a valuation perspective, here are some of the major public tech companies of recent years. If over-inflated valuations are the definition of a bubble these are serious red flags.

Symbol, EPS, P/E P, -0.24, LNKD, -0.36, Z, -2.05, GRPN, -0.08, ANGI, -0.07, ZNGA, -0.24, FB, 1.00, 81.52 YELP, 0.32, 137.07 KYAK, 0.43, 92.39 TRLA, -1.82, TWTR, -0.98, KING, 1.90, 7.62 GPRO, 0.77, 75.27 ETSY, -1.27, BOX, -1.52, GRUB, 0.36, 103.92 SHOP, -0.28,

2) Ultimately, all economic growth comes from productivity. The major tech companies of now are not focused on productivity - they are social, gaming, and leisure. They generally won't yield the productivity increases of the initial wave of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER28> I graduated with a CS degree during the last bubble and never got my career started so I will assume we're in the next one when I can find a job??

<comment><USER29> If you can't find a job with a CS degree right now, don't blame the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I guess that we are and if this bubble burst, it will start a rally in all countries to replace SV apps.

<comment><USER31> Good. SV is a terrible place to work and I hate how all the jobs are there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> When you have VCs giving the idea people free money, yes, it's a fucking bubble: [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/12/no-team-no-idea-no- pr...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/12/no-team-no-idea-no-problem-this- vc-will-fund-your-startup-anyway/)

</comment><comment><USER33> You need to define what a "tech bubble" is. Everyone throws around the term but it's hard to define exactly what it means.

</comment><comment><USER34> Keep calm and love tech; envision a world where everyone succeeds and people/companies help each other succeed; and disputes are resolved with civility (Zenefits/ADP, the spotlight is on you!)</comment>


Brussels. A lovely Melting-Pot. A data visualization - <AUTHOR> http://brussels-diversity.jetpack.ai/ <comment><USER2> Great!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Very inspiring</comment>


The power of culture - Why Japan will prevail. - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/14/tanimoto.trust.japan.quake/index.html?hpt=C2

<comment><USER2> WTF? Is anyone out there actually thinking that Japan will go away? I'm not. As an outsider (fat-American here) making blanket statements, they seem like one of the most industrious and resourceful groups of people on the planet.

<comment><USER3> Is there anyone thinking that Japan will go away? No.

Take this as one man's defiant fist against nature, and his pride in what his culture and country can endure and produce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I admire Japanese culture, it's a shame that with their extremely low birth rate they might eventually disappear. This is not an exaggeration, the current rate just has to continue as it is for a few more decades and there is no reason to believe it will change.

<comment><USER5> Will we be still reproducing with the standard method in "a few more decades"? I highly doubt it.

<comment><USER4> The birth rate is below replacement level, in fact it's almost nearly 1 which means that the population halves every generation. At least you are lucky and your politicians don't flood your country with immigrants making sure that your culture and gene pool stay intact.

<comment><USER6> > At least you are lucky and your politicians don't flood your country with > immigrants making sure that your culture and gene pool stay intact.

Erh, I hope I'm misreading this here. I'm sure there are no racists hanging out on HN?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the answer to why Japan is handling this so well is "culture", it's preparation and organization. I recommend everyone read Patrick's blog on Japan ([http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on- the-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan- earthquake/)). I think that gives some real perspective on exactly why Japan will prevail.

<comment><USER8> No, I think the author's point is that the Japanese culture is the reason that there isn't panicked looting and rioting in the streets. Civil disorder is not uncommon after a natural disaster, especially when basic necessities are on the line. I think Japan as a country has done as well as it has because it is a culture of acting in the best interests of the whole, not of oneself (mostly as a result of its dense population, I would wager).

The preparation and organization played a large part in ensuring a minimum number of casualties, but there's no doubt that it was a culture of doing one's duty/service to society that ensured that all the preparation and organization actually came into play when disaster struck.

<comment><USER9> > Civil disorder is not uncommon after a natural disaster

Is that really the historical case anywhere in the industrialized world? Seems less a matter of "individualism" in your culture than not having many of the sort of people who loot and riot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Much of a last glory.</comment>


WSJ: Facebook refused to check hate speech by India BJP fearing business fallout - <AUTHOR> https://www.dawn.com/news/1574532/facebook-refused-to-check-hate-speech-by-indias-bjp-fearing-business-fallout-wsj-report <comment><USER2> So "it's a private company, they can do what they want" only applies when convenient, got it.</comment>


Apple ends its annual music festival after 10 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/04/apple-ends-annual-music-festival/ <comment><USER2> Imagine telling someone from 1978 that there will be something called the Apple Music Festival in London and that it will have little to do with Apple Corps.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps)</comment>


Show HN: A better way to organize rails apps so that not everything is silo'd - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NullVoxPopuli/rails_module_unification <comment><USER2> Link 404's.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah here, is the problem. The link ends with `%EF%BB%BF` for some reason.

<comment><USER3> That's the byte order mark (aka ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE) in UTF-8. I wonder how it ended up at the end of the URL...</comment></comment></comment>


How do I find good people to work with. - <AUTHOR>

We have a small but well funded start-up with currently more demand for our product than our engineering team (me) can roll out. I need to know where we can find smart and motivated people to work with! Any suggestions are welcome.<p>Thanks,
Richard <comment><USER2> Are you willing to work with remote devs?

You may find that it offers a larger pool of talent & interesting people to draw on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Universities in the local area can be a good start - where are you based?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're based in London, probably should have mentioned that in the original post :)</comment></comment>


Dirt in Medieval Books - <AUTHOR> http://medievalbooks.nl/2015/03/27/dirty-medieval-books/ <comment><USER2> I love little things like this. I ordered a nice old two-volume set of Les Miserables and found when I opened it that someone had stuck a four-leafed clover in at the title page. I contacted the seller and asked if they had put that there and they said they had no idea. So now I have this wonderful little mystery and a clover that may be a century old flattened into one of my favorite books.

<comment><USER3> my mom puts 4-leaf clovers she finds in her yard in books. i am sure that one day those books will end up in someone else's hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The white gloves link is interesting - you're more likely to damage books by wearing the gloves than with clean hands, and they recommend against wearing them.

<comment><USER5> I was curious and found this article which might support your claim: [https://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/441-white_gloves_func...](https://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/441-white_gloves_functional_or_fashionable.html)

> Collectors and dealers take note: overall, there's a noticeable trend toward > preferring clean, dexterous hands over clumsier gloved ones. But with > variations in library policies, and the white gloves image so often in the > public eye, it's no wonder people are confused. This is one issue that would > benefit from less heat and more light - light levels appropriate for special > collections, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I collect old manuscripts, palimpsests, incunabula, all sorts - and have had a few interesting discoveries in my acquisitions over the years.

There's the 17th c. family bible that someone has made a fortune-telling doohickey in the rear cover of, made of two circles of paper with different starts and ends of fortunes, which rotate atop each other.

There's also the BBC archive copy of the Times from the outbreak of WWI, covered in notes from radio editors who it appears got their news from re- hashing broadsheets.

My favourite, however, is an early edition of Pope's translation of the Iliad that came complete with a lamb-gut condom. Can only imagine it sat next to someone's bed some centuries ago.

<comment> c-forster Just FYI, the fortune-telling doohickey sounds like a [volvelle]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvelle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvelle)).

<comment><USER6> Yes! Thank-you - spent a good minute fishing for the word in my head and gave up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if historians will someday uncover the annotations in people's ebooks, because that's all digital era readers will leave behind.

<comment><USER8> I loved this article. I showed the picture of the cat prints to my wife. We both agreed that cats have always been jerks. Our cat somehow manages to walk all over my laptop and my wife's iPad, usually with some impact to what we are doing. Sadly those moments won't be captured anywhere.

<comment><USER9> > Sadly those moments won't be captured anywhere.

Now they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I seriously love Erik Kwakkel's blog. I wish it had existed back when I was studying medieval lit.

</comment><comment><USER11> For some reason, now I'm thinking about all the items that I've touched in my lifetime. What evidence of my existence did I leave on them? How many did I touch once, and will never touch again?</comment>


Service Meant to Monitor Inmates' Calls Could Track You, Too - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/technology/cellphone-tracking-law-enforcement.html <comment><USER2> Lots of discussion in a repost of this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632)</comment>


A free terminal alternative for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://shellnotebook.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all --

Wanted to post a request for comments (RFC) for an application I've been developing.

Shell Notebook is a terminal that lets you save and organize your commands. Imagine the flexibility of Jupyter, the power of iTerm, and the cleanliness of Ulysses. A few friends and I have been using it for the past few weeks, and have found it really boosts our productivity.

I've been working on Shell Notebook for the past few months since the lockdown started. I found it hard to work on research projects on my remote server from home. I built Shell Notebook as an answer to that need. I keep long commands in different cells, and can run common workflows a lot quicker. Let me know your thoughts!</comment>


Tesla's market cap bigger than Ford and Chevy combined - <AUTHOR> https://wolfstreet.com/2020/01/24/tesla-global-deliveries-compared-to-top-10-volkswagen-toyota-gm-ford-honda-fca-mercedes-chart/ <comment><USER2> We've gone through these headlines before. What these writers don't seem to get is that Tesla is a different type of car company. One with a new point of view of what a car is. A company that focuses on Data and AI first.

I'm pretty sure that Tesla's stock will collapse again but ultimately its business model will succeed above all the others.

I'm not even a fan of both Tesla and Musk. I think both are overrated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ford and Chevy will no doubt make a comeback like ITT and HP did.</comment>


Ask HN: a bookmarking app focused on the content - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I've been thinking for some time about this idea, an app (a bit like getpocket.com) that given a link extract the valuable informations out of it but not limited to articles. You give it a Flickr photo url and shows only the photo, a vimeo video only the video player,...
You could organize those links in list and share them with everyone else like many other bookmarking apps do but more focused on the real content.
What do you think? Which type of content/websites would you like it to support? <comment><USER2> Hi. If I understand it's like parsing and putting a link extract for users next the content. So if it's that it can be help some.

But quick question, if I want the content and the video/photo under the same bookmark link. Will it not be as getpocket?.

If you don't mind. I will be more interested on the app that can track the update of the content or the comments or even the product price. But I don't know either if it's good idea.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> But I'm not really sure, it's just a random idea that I've implemented in part and would like to have some feedback so let me know what do you think

<comment><USER2> For now I don't see it fitting my need. But if I have many many bookmarks, how can I deal with them? what if there is a rank feature to let me see what the audience/friends are interested on will be greet. Like hot/cold.

Edit: Just to let you know I am in the same case then you ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692320)).</comment></comment></comment>


Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4799369.ece <comment><USER2> I read this story several years ago in Wired magazine (<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/02/57536>). I think I read it again in 05 in some other magazine. Most of them like this one, at first says how amazing it'll be to ride, then talks about how hard it'll be to build, throws something about carbon nano tubes and some cool diagrams.

Makes me wonder whether they are just recycling old content or if their has been real progress. (I went to the site of the company that is referenced in the Wired article to be building the space lift and its just spam!)

<comment><USER3> It's still very 'gee-wiz' science, I think the longest carbon nano tubes in ribbon form are only measured in inches.

See <http://www.spaceward.org/> for more information, or search "space elevator competition".

<comment><USER4> The even-bigger problem, as I understand it, is that the nanotubes don't just have to be 30,000 km long, they also have to be more-or-less defect free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember attending a talk on the space elevator (besides the Japanese project), and they were thinking about using a laser on the ground to shoot at the bottom on the elevator to power it up.

If it works, the trip up the elevator will probably take a couple hours, if not the whole day. When you have a bunch of people idling around for a long time, they'll want to do stuff. And in doing stuff, they might want to spend money. I can imagine the space elevator selling a part of its limited space to a store selling binoculars to look down at the earth. Or maybe some other entity like walmart or starbucks.

<comment><USER6> Well I think the commercial aspect will probably be the ticket price for the trip. As far as for-sale accommodations during the trip, I expect them to be analogous to those you get during airplane flights: mostly refreshments. Since looking at the earth will probably be one of the main attractions of such an elevator trip, I bet most people will plan to bring binoculars, so I don't foresee a significant market for that particular item.

<comment><USER7> They could do like cinemas: you can't bring your own popcorn/binoculars.</comment></comment></comment>


Welcome to Neom – an entire new land, purpose-built for a new way of living - <AUTHOR> https://www.neom.com/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion with comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543404)</comment>


How Kotlin handles null references better than Java? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-will-you-handle-null-references-if-you-are-designing-a-new-language-b1e4056456fc <comment><USER2> Extremely misleading title.

Kotlin is not a "new language". It already exists, and has code that depends on how it

The title would be better if you had said "How Kotlin handles null references better than stock Java" or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I updated it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would ban it. And I wouldn't be the first to do so either:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28106234/are-there- langu...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28106234/are-there-languages- without-null)</comment>