Alphabet considers Lyft investment of about $1B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/alphabet-is-said-to-consider-lyft-investment-of-about-1-billion <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see Lyft doing well here - the news was quite bad for Lyft it seemed just a year ago or so, with Uber dominating headlines and in users' minds of those inclined to use ride sharing as well as such rumors circulating such as Lyft failing to find a buyer. Fast forward after numerous gaffes on Uber's side including the former CEO, and there seems to be a lot of good will that has shifted to Lyft. Doesn't necessarily mean Lyft will thrive, but it looks a lot more promising than a year ago.

<comment><USER3> The level of differentiation is so small I don't think much of that matters. At the end of the day I care about getting from point A to be point B. Which service I use just depends on which app I feel like opening.

<comment><USER4> I regularly find Lyft to be more than twice the price of Uber. That price difference makes quite a difference to me, honestly.

<comment><USER5> On top of that I get a monthly Uber pass for $12. Gives me unlimited rides at fixed price of $3.50 withing 20 miles radius or so.

<comment><USER6> How can that be profitable for uber? Never heard of that pass before but sounds like an awful idea for them (and a great idea for commuters with a 15-20 mile commute). Having a private driver and no costs for a car for ~$160 per month is cheaper than just the car when you drive yourself.

Would love them to introduce that in London, the price would be the same as for a tube season ticket.

<comment><USER7> I suspect to build a steady base of pool rides. Once the market stabilizes they can dump the promo and keep the pool drivers busy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To address the elephant in the room:

>Alphabet is also an Uber shareholder through its GV venture capital arm, but Waymo, a unit of Alphabet, is currently suing Uber over self-driving car technology. As the relationship has deteriorated, Waymo signed a partnership with Lyft to work together on testing autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER9> >Uber is advancing on an investment from SoftBank Group Corp. and others of as much as $12 billion, most of which would allow existing shareholders to cash out.

These two events don't seem unrelated, there appears to be a big shuffle-up going on. GV must be one of the shareholders looking to cash out of Uber.

Google ventures was part of a 258 million dollar investment round in Uber in 2013, and it's anybody's guess as to what that's worth today with the complexities of Uber finances.

Alphabet subsidiary Waymo announced a partnership with Lyft in May, though the particulars of that partnership were vague.

<comment><USER10> Interesting observation! It makes total sense!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the game plan here? Burn investors money by offering cheap rides until...self driving cars can take over? It seems Uber and Lyft are both heavily subsidizing the actual cost of the ride and paying for that out of pocket. I use both services (Lyft preferably) when travelling to a country with drivers, and I'm not sure I've ever paid full price for a ride. "$25 credit" "50% off" "half price all weekend" promos seem to be coming in constantly.

Is either company building a viable business? Or will usage sharply drop off once they have to eventually charge a realistic rate for a ride? Or are the drivers just a temporary casualty and the plan is to get rid of them completely ASAP?

<comment><USER12> Uber subsidizes some rides even without discounts. Just a few nights ago I paid ~$17 for a pool ride where 1) I was the only passenger the entire length of the ride and 2) the driver was paid ~$21.

<comment><USER13> presumably that is balanced by the times when there are two riders paying $17 and the driver is paid $21.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's strange when companies leak that kind of information before a deal has been signed. It sounds desperate... Like if that will increase the pressure on Google to follow through with the deal... Or maybe it's also to incentivize prospective investors to sign over their funds to Lyft.

To me it reads like a warning sign that Lyft desperately needs money.

<comment><USER15> I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Lyft needs money. Both Lyft and Uber are operating at a big loss, and Lyft has been bleeding drivers over to Uber for the last couple of months if the user surveys from /r/lyft and /r/uber on reddit are any thing to go by.

If someone in Lyft management thinks that this leak will help twist Alphabet's arm even a little, of course they are going to leak it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been thinking a little about the economics of self driving cars and it seems to make sense that they'd seek a partnership with a ride sharing service. While I guess the eventual goal could be "a self driving car in every garage", you'd probably pay for more for one if (1) you're using it all the time (high utilization), and (2) it introduces some other kind of savings (like not having to pay a driver). Consumers have neither really but taxi/trucking companies would have both. I guess it's a question of how much the hardware is really going to cost. Does anybody know of publications that talk about the economics here?

<comment><USER17> I think the end game is more like the end of individual car ownership in cities. Company-owned or ideally(!!!) municiple fleets would be much more efficient in that idle time and parking would fade away.

<comment><USER18> I agree that's the end-game but recently I've revised my expected timetable.

I fully expected that my daughters, now 12 and 13, might never need to own cars. My wife even thinks they may never need to learn to drive. I now think that's unrealistic. It's true that for 95%+ of most journeys, self driving cars would be fine, but that last 5% or less really matters even if for only a minority of journeys. Finding a parking space can be very hard and our current streets, curbs and driveways aren't designed for self-driving vehicles. Rural settings can also be highly challenging.

I think the big changes initially will be road haulage because companies can re-engineer pickup and drop-off points to be highly autonomous friendly and automated. Next will be companies like Uber and Lyft providing driverless cabs from and to designated points. Then a gradual demographic trend to less car ownership, but driverless cars for the masses are going to take at least a decade to come IMHO. The last 10m is really tough in too many common scenarios.

<comment><USER19> I agree that the last 10 meters is going to be one of the harder things to solve, but i think you'll see people building calibrated parking spots into their driveways (some way of teaching the car how to get there from the road) and perhaps even companies doing the same with their parking lots and then publishing the details online. As self driving cars become more ubiquitous there will be companies that spring up to precision map places and feed that data into whatever databases the cars use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To my knowledge, the background check that Lyft has for its drivers is so lax that people can drive without having a social security number. I'm wondering how many undocumented drivers are working for Lyft as opposed to Uber, and how this squares with their squeaky-clean image.

<comment><USER21> Seriously, you're worried about whether they might be undocumented? If Lyft has Lax background checks that would have me worried more about my safety and less about immigration issues.

Are these lax checks something you know firsthand or have read somewhere?

<comment><USER20> I'm not worried about them being undocumented. What bothers me is that a company that claims to follow the law to a T and uses that as a marketing point contributes to violations of US immigration law.

(I know a guy who has driven for Lyft for months while he had a tourist visa. He entered an all-zeros SSN when he registered, and they never followed up.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> the "L" in the alphabet puzzle?

</comment><comment><USER23> Glad to hear this, I hope lyft uses the funds to get more drivers on board and advertise to more passengers. Lyft is transparent about its cut which is flat 25% while uber is being a total scam sometimes keeping up to 55% of the fare to itself.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope someone will combine decentralized currency with ride-sharing, such that the car owner gets a much higher percentage of the profits and the rider pays less. A small amount can also go to the app writer, who would be using the shared decentralized backend(such that multiple apps could share the same decentralized data store).

Once self-driving arrives each transaction could be a barter based on source and destination locations, along with the self-driving car's specific schedule. An intelligent network may emerge, where specific rides are cheaper for a car that needs to go to the specified area of town.

You could further augment costs by allowing the self-driving car to manage it's own energy supply.

I realize there are downsides to be thought through and the technology is nowhere near ready for this idea.

<comment><USER25> What does the decentralized currency add to it? Why/how would drivers get a larger percentage of the fare, in combination with the rider paying less? Right now ridesharing is cheap because it's partially subsidized; prices would go up if you stop doing that.

<comment><USER26> Centralised currency requires a bank like entity to transfer money from customer to driver. That forces the app to be centralised and one run by a unicorn. Small players will get fleeced on txn charges.

A decentralised app (or apps) could work on a protocol and use bitcoin and the margins can be squeezed to almost zero as there are lots of competing apps, providers and aggregators etc.

Think: like airlines. Only _without_ the luxury/economy differentiation that exists in that industry.

Ridesharing is subsidized right now but that can't last forever, right?

<comment><USER25> Transaction costs are an insignificantly small part of what it costs to run an Uber or a Lyft. Most of their costs go to employee salaries (including developers and customer support) and hosting fees.

I don't understand what using a decentralized currency would really change. Uber or Lyft could very easily add decentralized currencies as payment options in their apps now. It wouldn't change anything about the fundamental nature of the business other than you'd have another payment option. They still have to pay their software engineers, etc.

As for this theoretical decentralized app, who writes it? Who pays to run the servers? If I have a problem with my ride, who is the arbiter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lyft will be the first taxi company with self driving cars at scale. With this investment, they won't bother with other markets till they have US sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER28> Enemy of my enemy ...

<comment><USER26> Is non-commutitivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> After having invested $300MM in Uber, this is an interesting diversification strategy.

</comment><comment><USER30> How is Lyft any better than Uber?

<comment><USER31> [http://www.uberscandals.org](http://www.uberscandals.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Uber seem like such dickheads, I uninstalled it and used Lyft exclusively.

Good for them.

<comment><USER33> Certainly your prerogative. But you're in coalition with the tiny minority who stopped flying United after the Chicago PD yanked the guy off a flight.

<comment><USER34> Regardless of Uber or United, what's your point? If everybody else turns a blind eye to bad behavior, we might as well abandon our own principles out of convenience?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Alphabet by putting its fingers in every possible pie is begging for split-up.

<comment><USER36> I can't wait for them to be split them up. It could be the EU or the Republican party that succeeds in making this happen.

<comment><USER37> Why the Republican party? Isn't the Republican party pro free market and business generally?

<comment><USER38> Interesting that you don't regard breaking up monopolies (if we call Alphabet that for the sake of argument) as being "pro free market and business".

That's assuming "pro free market" and "pro business" aren't in contradiction with each other. It rather depends which business one is being "pro" towards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Alphabet has too much money syndrome. It's a nice problem to have; they obviously don't have enough good stuff to invest in. Lyft/Uber have no special sauce. They have a quickly growing revenue stream with dubious profit potential. That's it. Consumer internet is AlphaGoogle's bread and butter. They could easily put these guys out of business.

Regulatory concern and Wall Street accounting image management would be the justification for this kind of deal.

<comment><USER40> > Lyft/Uber have no special sauce.

So are you saying a new player can easily beat them?

<comment><USER39> With Google's warchest? Without a doubt. Google could run these guys over with their unsold inventory alone. Though I imagine that's probably used to prop up the CPAs of their big buyers. They could also snap their fingers and add a taxi app to all devices with Google Play Services.

<comment><USER41> Not sure why you're being down-voted so harshly. Google already has its own credit processing, mapping, routing, business management, and it's in nearly 60% of consumer pockets. A built-in (default installed) Android app which integrated with those services seems poised to make a serious run at market share. Drivers have no loyalty - better pay always wins. And Google doesn't need a profit, it needs only break even.

Though, it wouldn't really make sense given their business model. They want to know where you are, not get you there. If you have an Android phone, they already have that information. So it seems like an unlikely play.

<comment><USER42> Well... I think the case of google+ shows that it's not that easy to transfer marketshare between products. Or at least that google is not that great at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Open Source Data Science Masters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/datasciencemasters/go <comment><USER3> I don't like this curriculum very much - I think it is way too heavy on the data engineering side and way, way too little about the actual mechanics of the data science bit.

For example, the words "validation" (as in cross validation) and "overfitting" aren't mentioned anywhere on that page, and yet things like data scraping are mentioned multiple times.

With all due respect, I can find lots of people to do scraping, but it is much harder to find someone to explain a good strategy for cross validation on time series data (for example).

And yes, "data scientist" is a vague term that can mean pretty much anything.

Having said that, if you did everything on this list you'd be a pretty good data scientist.

(I run a data science team, and I'm involved in building a data science competency framework so it's something I think about a fair bit)

<comment><USER4> Good point. That said, easy enough to augment an expert data scientist with 4:1 data engineering support, whereas a data scientist working solo will spend 80% engineering data. With all the hype and inflated expectations, IMO much easier to hire aspiring data scientists than talented engineers who are satisfied with the data prep and admin aspects. MSPA programs are realistic that the bulk of their graduates will be spending much of their time as data janitors.

<comment><USER3> _IMO much easier to hire aspiring data scientists than talented engineers who are satisfied with the data prep and admin aspects_

As someone who hires both, I can guarantee this is incorrect. Well, maybe hiring "aspiring" data scientists is ok, but an aspirations will get me models that do exactly the wrong thing. So that isn't useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "how can you afford not to take advantage of an open source education?"

But there is a time cost to learning. For example, suppose a Masters degree takes two years, does the author have an estimate of how long it would take to complete her list?

And since the list is a little old (in terms of the rate at which this field is progressing), I would add Apache Spark to the list. I watched a video recently about how Scala took over the big data world (probably not true) [1], but the presenter made an interesting point about how Spark subsumes a lot of different things (streaming, machine learning, built in support for SQL) and it is good enough at those things even if not the best tool. Not surprisingly, that actually makes it a good candidate for adoption in the enterprise.

And then add the recent availability of things like the Databricks Community Edition (and similar offerings from competitors), and I could also make the case that you can start from a completely different entry point - learn Spark first, and then go deeper based on what you are interested in. But most of all, using a platform like Databricks takes away a major pain point - <USER2> often painful process of setting things up to start your work. [2]

My last point is not aimed at this particular resource, but just a general feeling I have when I see lists which incur significant time costs for the readers to fully pursue. I would like to see in these lists a brief statement about some popular things which were still omitted and why - simply because that gives some added confidence about the effort that went into the curation process.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHB6aJyhDSQ&t=10m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHB6aJyhDSQ&t=10m30s)

[2]I am not associated in any way with Databricks. Also, obviously Databricks is a commercial entity, so in some sense you are not just within the "all free and open" domain.

<comment><USER6> I use Spark at work, it's really good when you need to do some large scale analysis with your own custom code. Everything else it does is just ok. It certainly doesn't subsume ML tools.

<comment><USER5> Great to hear from someone who uses Spark at work. I see what you mean - subsumed is a bad word choice and I should not have tried to paraphrase. What do you feel about the phrase that the presenter uses - "One tool that fits everything"? (I am new to data science)

<comment><USER6> I think it's marketing nonsense. Databricks in particular has good "proximity to data" IMO, in that once you've figured out how to use it with your data sources, you can just fire up a web browser and connect to them, and connecting those data sources to your code is easy.

The problem with seeing Spark as your one tool for everything is that's only true if it's trivial to integrate your code with Spark. Viz tools like Plotly/Bokeh don't integrate well with Databricks' notebook, Deep Learning tools are not really supported yet unless you're running your own clusters and running special libraries to wire thing together.

I think Spark is a good workhorse for big data; it can do repetitive things well at large scale, it's less good when you want to use more niche tools since most of the Data Science community is not focussed on Spark. PySpark exists and will probably be good enough, but only if your data fits into memory in a single machine anyway.

And if you're not dealing with big data, Spark is overkill. It's usually simpler to just get a box with more RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All these curricula seem a bit too complex. IMHO, there's one thing that should be prioritized on top of everything else. The concept of probability, computable probability distributions, and Bayesian inference.

It's the one thing that brings a unifying umbrella to all modes of reasoning under uncertainty. [https://probmods.org/](https://probmods.org/) and [http://forestdb.org/](http://forestdb.org/) seem to be the best resources for this at the moment.

Besides, I dislike Data Science which seems to be a new buzzword. Data Engineering would be more acceptable, as I think people working in companies are building stuff rather than developing new theories. But I don't like it that much.

<comment><USER3> I agree Bayesian techniques are important, and satisfying intellectually.

The problem is that it is entirely possibly to build perfectly good models without ever touching anything Bayesian (excluding naive-Bayes classifiers perhaps!), and then adding Bayesian techniques will rarely improve the accuracy in anyway.

But I'm happy to admit my understanding of Bayesian techniques is incomplete. It's something I'm working on ([https://probmods.org/](https://probmods.org/) is great), but I just haven't found anywhere to use it in anger yet.

<comment><USER8> So something that no one usually admits is that there are three types of reasoning about stuff (frequentist, bayesian, and nonparametric), and each of them has their pros and cons and circumstances to use them.

So with frequentist statistics, it is really easy to reason about what should be the correct estimator (it is almost always the obvious one). For example, with functional time series (where each data point is a function and not a real value), then it is straight forward to find an MLE - it is just the average function. But defining a prior on the space of twice differentiable functions isn't as easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So far, the downside of this is that many companies seem to require a masters.

<comment><USER10> What about showing a portfolio of data analyses? Anybody has experience on this?

<comment><USER11> Someone got hired on a data science team I worked on with no master's degree, partially due to scraping some of our company's data from our website and showing some cool data science-like stuff using that scraped data to the people interviewing/hiring. That said, this may have been a successful tactic there too because the team would sometimes hire non-master's/PhD holders if a person showed aptitude and 'passion' for this type of work. We had PhDs who were really not equipped to do well at the business level, and those with Bachelor's that made major contributions (and vice-versa). Unfortunately there are still companies and teams out there that think a higher degree is a good filter...</comment></comment></comment>


Replika wants to be about.me, but for chatbots - <AUTHOR> http://meetreplika.co <comment><AUTHOR> Today it has become so important to be connected: a valuable connection can give you access to either a vital piece of advice or feedback, or a potential business partner, customer, investor, employer. But we cannot be available 24/7.

What if we could send our digital personas into the world to do that for us? Could this be the future of business networking? Can we hack productivity this way?

Replika is a chatbot that communicates for you, 24/7, and up to 1000 of people at the same time. You can personalize your Replika with your own questions of choice, and then relax and engage in more meaningful activities. By the end of the day, you'll have your conversational reports all sorted out and you can take them from there.

Thing is, in the near future we'll all be using the power of A.I. to make our careers and business thrive and that will also apply to how we network. The future of professional networking is in conversational agents and Replika can work both ways.</comment>


Unprecedented study across 17m UK health records reveals Covid risk factors - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258378643979620353 <comment><AUTHOR> The project, including source code: [https://opensafely.org/](https://opensafely.org/)

Press release: [https://opensafely.org/press-releases/2020/05/covid-risk- fac...](https://opensafely.org/press-releases/2020/05/covid-risk-factors/)

Paper (not yet peer-reviewed): [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1)

Interesting part of the thread about how they did it without putting patients' data at risk: [https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258431405450833921](https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258431405450833921)</comment>


America is determined to sink Huawei - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/05/21/america-is-determined-to-sink-huawei <comment><USER2> This may be a bit of pro-USA or pro-Western favoritism on my part, but if a company is getting away with illicitly gaining access to trade secrets in order to build a competitive advantage while shielded by its home country (not the best example, but t-mobile v. huawei - I imagine plenty of others are classified), is it in-scope for opposing nations to destabilize the company responsible for doing so?

<comment> the-dude How about a company leveraging its monopoly on operating systems to illicitly gain an advantage in other markets, say ... webbrowsers?

Should we nuke them?

<comment><USER3> Companies who make a web browser and a company that builds the hardware backbone of a nation's internet are not even comparable.

<comment><USER2> Tangential conversation, but I might actually disagree with you there. The modern web browser is the gateway to easily the vast majority of content consumption and creation tools currently in existence. They can be compared in terms of whether control of such can sway the balance of power in a grander scheme.

<comment><USER4> The web browser is easier to replace than almost any of those things, though. I regularly use 2 or even 3 different web browsers on the same computer and another on my phone. If Chrome went away, there'd Be basically no impact on my life. Same not true for operating systems as it's harder to switch.

<comment><USER5> > The web browser is easier to replace than almost any of those things, > though. I regularly use 2 or even 3 different web browsers on the same > computer and another on my phone. If Chrome went away, there'd Be basically > no impact on my life. Same not true for operating systems as it's harder to > switch.

I'm not so sure. Yeah you could fork Chromium or Firefox (the only two browsers left), but "web standards" have ballooned and gotten so bloated that you'd need a pretty significant engineering organization to manage to support it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I need to start by saying that I live in a country that's a member state of the European Union. I also need to add that I am in no way a fan of China, or the US of A, or any nation state or federal state for all that matter.

Now that's out of the way, what I am a fan of is fighting _for_ something instead of fighting _against_ something. I don't believe or understand this narrative of fighting China. We've been outsourcing everything to China in the last two decades, we've helped a billion of their people come out of poverty and we've helped them build infrastructure that we only dream of. Now that they're a major power, we're starting to declare all sorts of wars on them. What if, instead of doing all these economic, military and other types of warfare, we would focus, together or alone (as states) in excelling. In building the best tech, in building the most awesome factories, in having the best quality of life for our people?

What if instead of declaring war on China and moving our production to South East Asia or Africa and then helping them grow out of poverty while extracting as much value as we can (and then in the future we declare wars on them as they gain a foothold in the globalized economy), we help ourselves be awesome and in the process help South East Asia, and Africa, and whoever else can get into a win-win situation?

I guess I'm a bit tired of this anti-China rhetoric sprouting up on Western social media. It's a classic case of identifying a 'common enemy' so that our people can be sheeped into whatever the powers that be want them to be sheeped into.

<comment><USER7> The problem with China is that it has taken a hostile non-cooperative approach, ie it's acting in bad faith. This is evidenced by its diplomatic failures with the region and with the world. The CCP is using economic leverage to coerce smaller players in the global system. The US has its hands tied here, there really are no other options geopolitically.

I live in Europe as well, and sometimes it feels like European leadership is extremely confused: EU is a shitshow that nobody seems to be able to lead (just look at how long it took for agreeing on debt mutualization/Eurobond, Brexit, VDL apologizing to Italy, etc), Germany working with Russia on Nord stream 2 after its actions in Ukraine, Sweden pretending like the lax virus approach has nothing to do with its hyper leveraged banks and heavily indebted households, list goes on... and all we can do is entertain ourselves by making fun of Trump. We are a joke, we can't even keep our union together. We can't even pay for our military because daddy America has to foot the bill and if they don't our European leaders start whining about lack of US leadership.

The US Fed had enough vision to extend the dollar swap lines to more central banks including the Swedish central bank. For the ECB there is a permanent arrangement. Despite the "tough love" we Europeans are getting on trade from the US, ultimately Europe will soon enough realize the US is its best ally.

We just want freedom and fair economic practices. We won't get it if we let China play communist game theory with the only planet we have.

<comment><USER8> DJT fucked both US and EU when it started to create a wedge with trade tariffs and other issues. Instead of strengthening EU and US ties he weakened it and gives china more space to operate in.

China can play any games it wants when the rest of us are locked on making cheap political points by pointing finger at eachothers inadequate response to this pandemic.

<comment><USER7> What are you talking about? The EU runs a current account surplus with the US, and it's a protectorate of the US through NATO. Europe is absolutely delusional and ungrateful.

<comment><USER8> I didn't down vote you.

Multinational companies are not bringing profits home. This was perhaps the best decision Trump made was to even the playing field and brought it down to about the same as most EU countries.

Europe is a much larger population but it's not as rich as US per capita so don't expect europeans to buy more US goods. I agree that sometimes the tariffs are too high. But the situation is more complex. VAT in Sweden is 25%, a Tesla Model S cost about 100k$ here because of VAT mainly not just tariffs. Many US products are simply too expensive for the same reasons and a Europea generally lower purchase power. Americans like to buy European luxury goods many europeans themselves can't buy. Trade is not a single transaction. I would love to own Tesla or buy more american, but I can only afford iPhone not Tesla. And iPhones are made in China...

Nato has protected EU, but not against the refugee crisis which affect EU much more than US. US seems to infact increased the problems and is simply trying to leave now. US cares about mexican immigration but don't do much to help situation in ME.

<comment><USER7> The US manufacturing produces things that Europeans can buy, but in some instances US companies can't compete with their heavily subsidized European counterparts.

At some point Trump got angry at us and said "OK no tariffs, but ALSO no subsidies". Obviously Europe didn't agree, and the US put tariffs in place.

All this is logical, I get it that Trump is hyperbolical and extreme, but he's not that crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It announced new rules that target Huawei's in-house microchips, which power > many of the firm's products. The rules are aimed at the factories that take > such designs and turn them into working silicon, such as those owned by TSMC > in Taiwan and SMIC in China.

Out of curiosity, what's the legal basis for this? Is it just a threat, and if companines like TSMC don't follow it, they'll also be blacklisted from the US market?

<comment><USER10> Can the US afford to blacklist TSMC from anything?

<comment><USER11> From [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/trump-tsmc- us-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/trump-tsmc-us-chip- facility.html)

 _Mark Liu, T.S.M.C.'s chairman, told The New York Times in October that T.S.M.C. had been negotiating with the Commerce Department about a possible U.S. plant, but said it would require substantial government subsidies. How much, if any, public money might be associated with the company's decision was unclear._

And from [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-48917705](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48917705)

 _The US State Department has approved a potential arms sale to Taiwan, estimated to be worth $2.2bn (£1.76bn), the Pentagon said._

Maybe TSMC thought it would be really good if Tawain were protected better thanks to these weapons, and TSMC would also like these subsidies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://outline.com/cxJ47a](https://outline.com/cxJ47a)

Is there a link to what this new rule, is exactly?

The article states it in one line but doesn't reference it beyond that.

<comment><USER13> I think it's this rule.[1] The Commerce Department's press release[2] summarizes the new rule/licensing requirements.

[1][https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/19/2020-10...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/19/2020-10856/export- administration-regulations-amendments-to-general-prohibition-three-foreign- produced-direct)

[2][https://www.commerce.gov/news/press- releases/2020/05/commerc...](https://www.commerce.gov/news/press- releases/2020/05/commerce-addresses-huaweis-efforts-undermine-entity-list- restricts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's going to be awfully hard to do since we decided it was better to make things overseas because it's cheaper and we didn't have to pay so many in- house engineers.

<comment><USER15> We make the things that make the things though, so if we just don't ship the meta-machines over seas, we'll be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious what the perceived endgame is here.

Is it to sink a specific company? Send a message to a country with clear military aspirations? Reshore the semiconductor industry? Play to the president's political base? What?

If the goal is to reshore the semiconductor manufacturing industry, that's not going to work. Every country will have a competitive advantage in manufacturing against the US for as long as it prints the global reserve currency.

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

<comment><USER17> November elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know many ppl are going to defend "America" here.

But remember who you are defending.

Great power rivalry is bad for corporate profit and amazing for wage laborer, which most of HN is.

If you are an worker in North America, this type of headline should be a moment of celebration.

<comment><USER19> Healthy business rivalry is good, systematic theft and cloning of superior products is what we're talking about here and huawei absolutely deserves the "corporate death penalty" for its behavior.

<comment><USER20> What if the Chinese government is working overtime to prevent the superior companies from reaching their markets? Should the Chinese people be stuck with inferior products? I'm not condoning it at all but this is about more than just Huawei. China is doing this with more than just Huawei, anyway, just take a look at what COMAC has been doing.

<comment><USER19> That's a losing battle, there's no point in fighting for the Chinese market since it's not a real market. The winner there will always be a state controlled entity until the political environment changes. But Chinese companies should absolutely be barred from doing business outside of China as their influence is toxic to democracy and freedom.

When things change, so I will change my mind.

<comment><USER21> 2017 revenue from China (USD):

* Apple: 44.8 Billion

* Intel: 14.8 Billion

* Qualcomm: 14.6 Billion

* Boeing: 11.9 Billion

* Micron Technology: 10.4 Billion

Based on [1].

Meanwhile, "Europe's listed firms expect to glean $514 billion in revenue from China."[2]

I just don't understand where people get this idea that Western companies can't do business in China. They have a massive presence in China, unmatched by the presence of any Chinese company in the US or Europe.

1\. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-watch-these- are-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-watch-these-are-the-us- companies-with-the-most-at-stake-in-china-2018-03-29) 2\. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-markets- eu/euro...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-markets-eu/europes- listed-firms-expect-to-glean-514-billion-in-revenue-from-china-idUSKCN1PN19H)

<comment><USER19> As long as they accept to get their IP cloned, hurt people and ignore consequences. It's a well remunerated pound of flesh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unpaywalled archive: [https://archive.is/qolrV](https://archive.is/qolrV)

<comment><USER23> Certificate error

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems like HUAWEI was determined to eat everybody's lunch in the first place and that was in large part a plan backed by the Communist Party in China. It seems that this is the backed response from the west, at least for America.

Let China develop their own technology and then we'll see a different story and nothing will stop them from taking over the world, by excellence not by IP-theft and benefit from others research. On the other I was quite happy to see China rising out of the poverty. It would have been a good counterbalance to the western Capitalistic world. Unfortunately they played the same game but with different weapons: cheap labor, IP theft and large pools of talent to pick from. Maybe the obedience of Chinese played a role behind this growth for they all benefited. However, since Xi's rise to power the ambition to dominate Asia with a fist only grew. I hope the Chinese people don't loose the opportunity to change their future for the better.

</comment><comment><USER25> The issue with Huawei is that they are actually 4 years ahead in terms of infrastructure technology compared to any american company.

<comment><USER26> American companies are not behind, they don't exist.

US companies can't compete in the market where they don't exist. Qualcomm sells components, not mobile networks. There are only four big companies left for for 4G/LTE/5G mobile infrastructure:

        COMPANY   MARKET SHARE
        Huawei    28%
        Ericsson  27%
        Nokia     23%
        ZTE       13%
        Samsung    3%

<comment><USER27> Market share is not very telling in case of Huawei, as they're notorious for dumping expensed by subsidies awarded by the Chinese regime.

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

If the Chinese regime throws cash at a company to buy themselves into a dominant position to play their role in a geopolitical game, market share means nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> U.S.A, not America, here in Brazil we haven't any issue with Huawei

<comment><USER29> This again? I think your point is appropriate when speaking Spanish, Portuguese (EDIT: not Portuguese), etc. However, in common English (no, not just in the US) the word "America" more often refers to the USA. Languages don't use the same or derivative words for many other countries as well.

<comment><USER30> Not even in Portuguese. "Americano" specifically means "someone from the United States". Spanish is the _only_ major European language in which its local equivalent of "America/American" does not refer specifically to the USA.

<comment><USER29> Thank you, apologies and I've edited my comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Formal – Interruption free communication - <AUTHOR> https://www.formalapp.com <comment><USER2> The non-immediacy of messaging was one of the things I loved so much about FidoNet. A few times a day, your node (BBS) would dial into a hub server somewhere (sometimes over a long distance phone call) and download the mail bundle. The more messages you got, the longer it would take, so there was always some excitement when the bundle was large. You'd read your mail with care--after all, you might get 2-3 private messages a day--and responded with care. Normally, you'd just let your messages get delivered during the next daily mail call but if you had something important to send, you could initiate one manually. If you were sending internationally and didn't mind spending a little coin, it was fun to mark your message as "direct" and watch your node dial up the recipient's node across the pond or the world.

It was remarkable technology for the savvy home computer user in 1989.

<comment><USER3> When I was 12 I was the hub for FidoNet mail in my smallish town. I was tweaking the settings before heading on vacation. We left the next morning, and returned a week later. We came home to an official notice from the police to contact them immediately. My parents did, and pretty soon 2 police officers showed up at our door.

They wanted to know who had been "hacking" from the second line in the house. It turns out I forgot to enter the area code for the FidoNet long distance number, and some poor souls had been getting a phone call at 3am with "strange noises", which auto-dialed every minute for 3 hours straight.

The police had disconnected the line, and I had to spend an hour explaining to the police officers what a BBS is, and what FidoNet is. I remember trying to draw a diagram, but it was in vain. In the end they just left confused, reconnected the line and I promised to be more careful in future.

<comment><USER4> I had a similar experience as a kid. We had a second phone line as my parents were both occasionally on call. Because they were just on call and the phone company charged extra, we didn't have the 'tone dialing' feature on the line. When they weren't on call, I was able to use that line for BBS's and Compuserve.

It turns out that at least for US-Robotics pulse dialing is not an exact science. The BBS I used most frequently was often busy so I would turn the modem volume down and just wait for it to eventually connect.

One day my parents got a call from the police who had gotten complaints of persistent prank phone calls late at night. I realized the problem and that I had to admit to staying up way past my bedtime online, I don't recall what the police threatened but I was definitely scared. I gave them a list of the top few BBS #s I called, and one of them was one digit off.

I got off pretty easy, I think I just paid for 'tone dialing' on that line going forward.

<comment><USER2> Tone dialing was such a crack-up. My grandmother refused to pay for it and it was always such a pain in the ass placing calls from her house. What was so funny is that the phone company had already transitioned to digital switches so somebody actually had to configure that line to intentionally not interpret the DTMF. If you didn't pay the $3 or whatever a month for tone service, they would have to create a burden for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if this is possible, but I would love this as a layer above existing messaging platforms.

For instance, I just want my iPhone to batch my notifications until a certain time, without me having to worry about becoming distracted.

I want just 20-30 minutes of unhindered communication (real-time as well), and then go back to the batch-mode.

I am currently doing this with "Cellular Data Off", but it's a bit annoying when I want to listen to music without being distracted. I want the data, but not the notifications. Right now, as a time-consuming hack, I manually turn off all messaging notifications.

A very important aspect of life, and a step in the right direction. But does not seem like a worthy replacement just yet.

<comment><USER6> In Android, you can disable App notifications. That may accomplish what you're looking for.

<comment><USER7> You can do that on iOS also. It's pretty fine-grained. The settings range from "no activity" (useful for Facebook) to "icon badge only" to notifications to "show a modal notification" (useful for my-flight-is-leaving-now airline apps)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's been years since I've pointed out that something doesn't work when cookies are blocked, since it's at least half of the demos I click on.

But out of curiosity, I just checked for an error message on this (blank) page:

        SecurityError: The operation is insecure.
        e.exports.getItem()

So... it's a local storage call, which uses the domain's cookie permissions. That makes more sense (than cookies).

Still, how can a first visit to a site require a _getItem_ call before displaying anything at all?

Others commenters are saying this is not even a demo, but just a landing page. Wow. You might be overengineering.

<comment><USER9> > Still, how can a first visit to a site require a getItem call before > displaying anything at all?

Something like "the index.html page is empty, and gets populated from other templates by (insert Javascript framework here)".

There's this weird fetish now for doing literally everything in Javascript instead of rendering pages server-side ever.

<comment><USER8> So make this your storage module:

      // For a given domain, localStorage uses the same permissions as cookies.  When
      // cookies are blocked, attempts to access localStorage will throw a Security
      // exception.  We do that test once here so that we can safely test for this
      // object everywhere else.
      define(function() {
      	try {
      		var K = '__test', V = 1, s = window.localStorage;
      		if (s) {
      			s.setItem(K, V);
      			if (V == s.getItem(K)) {
      				s.removeItem(K);
      				return s;
      			}
      		}
      	} catch(e) {}

      	return null;
      });

I mean, I like javascript too. But whether or not your site is rendered entirely by javascript, you should be feature testing for localStorage.

And if your site _is_ rendered entirely by javascript,

(1) it's _impossible_ that rendering to a first-time visitor can depend on something previously stored there.

(2) your site will be hosed by _any_ uncaught error during load

For this to happen on an essentially static page is just laughable.

/rant. Okay, I'm good until 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An async communication protocol already exists in Email. So what makes this different than email?

<comment><USER11> While I might not "get it," I never got why you would limit a message to 160 characters either, and those guys seem to be doing ok.

<comment><USER12> Actually, they're struggling quite a bit.

<comment><USER13> Who is the They here? Seems like the guys that made the platform and the top engineers working for them all got rich off of the idea.

<comment><USER14> True - but that's all in the past now.

Twitter's overall future is grim...They're either going to properly niche down and try not to be all things to all men, or die. Just my opinion.

<comment><USER15> Twitter will never be strapped for cash, it's owned by a filthy rich billionaire.

<comment><USER14> There's got to come a time when even the filthiest rich billionaires say enough is enough, this project is never going to hit a satisfactory ROI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dorian-graph Related: Slow web movement

[http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-web](http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-web) [http://theslowweb.com/](http://theslowweb.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this an actual product? Or just a landing page?

<comment><USER17> I was wondering the same. Why are they giving away the idea before they have delivered the product?

<comment><USER18> To see if there is interest. I believe HN has a rule that a "Show HN" can't be just a landing page. This is just a landing page without the "Show HN."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why can't someone just check their email 3 times a day? Wouldn't that accomplish the same effect?

<comment><USER20> Why can't people just delete the photos and videos they receive after 10 seconds?

<comment><USER21> Because that's a ridiculously stupid idea that defeats the very concept of taking a photo or recording a video.

That, or I am too old already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see it coming: "Pay five bucks to get your message delivered in just ten minutes!"

<comment><USER23> I raise you: "Pay ten bucks to only get messages delivered to you once a day!"

<comment><USER24> Pay fifteen bucks for the message, we'll refund the customer their $10, and deliver the message RIGHT NOW!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How is this better than DND? My messages are there when I feel like looking at them.

<comment><USER5> From what I know, you cannot fine-tune your DND. For instance, I want certain notifications to show up versus not.

I prefer "Cellular Data Off," because there is greater need distance that way.

<comment><USER25> Android has a few filters: alarms only, priority notifications, calls/messages from specific contacts, etc.

I agree that greater flexibility in creating custom rules would be welcome though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Flagged for being a landing page for something that doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice! This reminds me of an app I worked on many years ago but never finished. A Twitter clone that only let you post 1 message per day. The idea being that if you can only post once per day you'll make your posts more thoughtful.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think delivering messages 3 times a day is the wrong approach. There is a need for synchronous communications, it just should not be chat channels you are connected to all day long.

One preferable idea would be to use notification channels that would reduce significantly the noise you receive from your pairs. I speak at length about the idea here: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/channels-best-way-handle- inte...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/channels-best-way-handle-internal- discussions-cedric-dugas)

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, whenever I install a messenger (seems like I am doing this too frequently last few months, since every group of friends like to use a completely different messenger), first thing I try is a simple "ping-pong" messages, that is - "is this working?" \- "yes, it is.", usually even with seeing the friend face to face.

I cannot imagine these "ping-pong" messages - to even establish if the messenger is working, that the other person has it installed correctly etc - would take about a day.

<comment><USER30> Is that a problem? Everyone is always in a rush these days :) by its very nature. If you need this messenger app working "right now" then it won't do the job for yo

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems like the "watch" feature is what makes this idea interesting. You receive batched updates for a channel when you're not paying attention to it, and if both participants in the channel are paying attention, then you receive real-time messages. You're limited in the number of channels you can pay attention to.

I don't really see what's stopping Messenger, Slack, et al. for adding a "work" or "focus" mode that achieves this trivially though.

</comment><comment><USER32> You can do this on any e-mail client by just using "offline mode".

Now, I don't like the concept. It opens the possibilities to a world of excuses and lack of accountability.

</comment><comment><USER33> Similar to an idea I've had for a slow messenger.

It talks about threads and "number of tasks you're working on". Is this thing targeted for use at work? because that seems like the worst use case for the limitations it outlines.

I imagine it more as a digital snail mail with a digital mailman bringing you messages once a day. An effort to bring the romanticism of a messenger bringing you an important message.

</comment><comment><USER34> Anyone interested in interruption free messaging should check out WiredIn: [https://wiredinapp.com](https://wiredinapp.com)

It's an existing product, so you can try it yourself. The biggest difference is that the interruptions are happening at the same time for the whole team, therefore increasing the total quiet-time of the company.

</comment><comment><USER35> this looks like a fun project, maybe there could be some use among a small circle of friends, for example.

that said, i won't speak for what the market will sustain, but in terms of what we _need_ as a society, i believe we are past the point of needing to invent new messaging platforms. we have email, we have xmpp,(and we have a smattering of other pretty good platforms like WhatsApp, though it is not open) etc. we have mature spam filtering technology built around email, we have TLS, etc etc . this stuff already works. and when it doesn't, we should be working together to improve upon them. there's a lot of work to be done making existing communication more secure, and also things like personal data warehousing of one's communications, etc. etc.

we are not in need of another app (i don't even know what platforms this will run on -- linux? probably not.) that does less than what email did 40 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there an actual app here, or is this just a website describing something that would be nice to have right now?

</comment><comment><USER37> Semi-ironic that the very first FAQ is about how to circumvent the main feature of the service, no?

</comment><comment><USER38> On the conceptual level, this seems great, because it removes the expectations of a timely response from both parties (sender and receiver). However, other (more immediate) channels will probably get used instead, precisely where this app would be most valuable.

<comment><USER39> It seems like the "Watch" feature would actually take care of this. If both people are watching the same chat, they would both get real time notifications, and could chat in real time. The app limits how many threads you can be watching, though, trying to force you to actively opt-in to things that you want to pay attention to because they are directly relevant to what you are doing right now.

<comment><USER38> Well, that seems unfortunate. The value I see in this application is its explicit asynchronous nature which saves you from the burden of checking (or even thinking about) messages or email. The ability to be unreachable where the other party knows about it. Because right now, it's considered rude if I don't manage to reply quickly enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If this turns out to be useful, I could see a situation in which this could be very useful. I've always disliked the way in which calls and SMS disrupt people's actions.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why not an app that sends messages when you're not busy?

<comment><USER39> It would be hard to detect the best time to deliver the message. Naive approaches could get it almost exactly wrong, as one of the times when I really don't want to be interrupted is when I'm just sitting and reading something, and not really interacting much. I'm sure there are better ways of determining if the user isn't focusing on anything, and maybe some of them would work well as a trigger for delivering messages. That would be pretty nifty.

<comment><USER41> Correct, it would be hard, which is why if you we're able to figure it out, it'd be useful and hard to copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I like the idea of this. But it should be an email client.

<comment><USER43> I made a Chrome extension for Gmail which includes a timed inbox lockout feature. You could configure this so that you can only see your inbox at specific times of day.

[https://inboxwhenready.org/](https://inboxwhenready.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is just email.</comment>


A 1/48 scale model of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket - <AUTHOR> https://bps.space/falcon-heavy <comment><USER2> This is all the more impressive when you realise all the design, build, programming, filming, editing and even the music is done by one guy. I highly recommend subscribing to his YouTube channel to keep up with his current project: [https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo](https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo)

<comment><USER3> From his about page: "I studied music production in college, and after seeing the ambition of SpaceX, and the excitement in the new space industry, I was hooked. I wanted to work in aerospace... "

At first, I wondered what SpaceX role would suit him best and why SpaceX hadn't hired him. Then it occurred to me that humanity might be better off with passionate polymaths such as him working outside as opposed to inside the establishment. After all, Elon Musk started his aerospace career outside the establishment. And SpaceX is now establishment?

Polymaths have been quite productive in crypto and other low-startup-cost environments. But, apparently, not so much in autonomous vehicles, etc. This could be a function of the learnings required for physical world projects, to wit: quaternions, telematics, aerodynamics, etc.

So, would we/he be better off inside or outside the Borg? Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> What he's done is super impressive and cool, but has he acquired the necessary base knowledge to work on an avionics, propulsion, etc team at SpaceX?

I'm not in any of those fields, but I'd have to imagine there's a large amount of background knowledge that someone with an aero or mechanical engineering degree has, that he hasn't picked up with model rockets.

<comment><USER5> Majority of engineers with a degree are useless right after graduation. Its a ton of random math that (most) of which you don't use again since you use modeling software.

Source: Did Aero

Someone doing this as a Amateur can damn well pick up whatever they need to.

<comment><USER6> > Its a ton of random math that (most) of which you don't use again since you > use modeling software.

You absolutely need that math because you need to know when the modeling software is giving the wrong answer. You're supposed to do quick and dirty calc by hand (ok fine I use mathematica) in a simplified system, then you refine with numerical software and compare the two. It's shockingly easy to get the wrong answer with numerical CAD.

<comment><USER7> Not a mech eng but I've taken several eng classes and do a lot of DIY stuff. I've been designing a swing set/exercise rig for myself in Inventor and using FEA to sanity check my beam sizes for the given loads, just cause why not. Since I already had it parameterized, I wanted to see what load it would take with legs made out of 1.25x5.5 boards, just cause. The sim showed it would take several hundred pounds with almost no lateral deflection. Hmmm.

Anyone who's worked with decking boards knows they are pretty wobbly by themselves. I'm staring at the results, intuitively knowing they're dead wrong. So I model a plain column of one of these boards 16' long and 2000lbs, straight down. Zero side deflection.

Ah, I realized, it doesn't model buckling.

Map != territory.

It's always important to have multiple perspective of inference on a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> SpaceX has a huge potential opportunity for raising funding / earning profits via toy licensing and sales: [https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex- overwhelmed-by-deman...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex-overwhelmed- by-demand-for-toy-dinosaur-that-went-into-orbit-51590931933)

Wouldn't it be interesting if Elon could achieve his Mars objectives faster not by selling LEO satellite services or space launch capacity but by selling and/or licensing toys (and sparking dreams) here on Earth?

Despite the current pandemic, this is a great time to be a young person. Dreams and human potential seem infinite.

Edit: Who would own the IP, NASA or SpaceX or both?

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. I would buy the heck out of a 4000-piece Falcon Heavy LEGO set, and I suspect I'm not alone.

<comment><USER9> Yep, it can go right next to my 1969 piece Saturn V.

<comment><USER10> Saturn V scale Falcon 9 fan submission under review.

[https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba...](https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba917b6e5b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's exactly the content I'm on HN for

<comment><USER12> Yes, this is cool to see.

But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people make it out to be. (Rockets were difficult when we didn't have computers.) Also, some universities have student teams which regularly launch similar rockets.

I'm personally hoping for someone to build an IC fab or even a wafer stepper in their garage.

<comment><USER13> > But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people > make it out to be.

It really doesn't. The scale model probably weighs a few pounds where as the real Falcon Heavy weighs 3 million pounds [1]. Think about what a different scale that is!

Also note that the scale model's (really cool) test flight failed -- with the real Falcon Heavy that lesson would cost something like $150M.

I think this is kind of similar to: it's really easy to query/serve a SQL database even if it's a few tens of terabytes in size. But make it a few tens of exabytes, and things are dramatically more difficult due to the scale. The architecture that works at the terabyte size (single machine) falls over completely.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The whole time I was reading this article, I was hoping I would eventually see a "buy now" button at the end. Alas...

<comment><USER15> He has a shop here - [https://bps.space/shop](https://bps.space/shop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember my first play around with the small rocket kits. 1 small motor and you press "Fire" annnnd it's gone. You can't see it anymore and it's lost lol.

<comment><USER17> That just means you put too big a motor in it! Each motor letter designation is double the total impulse of the previous one - it's a log scale. If you stick a C motor into a small, well-built, lightweight rocket, it's going to go over a thousand feet. Unless you painted it a _very_ bright color, you're probably going to struggle... so stick to the A motors for your maiden flight!

(Also: launch from the upwind edge of the field!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gimballed thrust puts this squarely into all the cool hobbies involve ITAR territory.

<comment><USER19> The tube launched rocket looked decidedly weapon-like too.

Cool tech though. Hope he doesn't get into trouble

<comment><USER20> He's been pretty careful to not do anything illegal (he's talked about this in a few live-streams), for example not open-sourcing any of his control software and using just local IMU data for in-flight control.

<comment><USER21> Is this a typically US thing or does this kind of thing risk getting you into trouble elsewhere too? I mean the first thing you'd want to try once you have a "platform" is things like GPS guidance, adding wings & making cruising rockets, trying terrain guidance etc. Isn't the cat out of the bag with this kind of tech already, much like strong crypto was once a non-exportaple technology in the US, but now it isn't? What exactly is the tech that is off limits (I don't mean tech that will get someone to come to your house and ask questions, but tech that is actually 100 % certainly illegal?)

<comment><USER22> Didn't work out great for this guy from New Zealand: [http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml](http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml)

(Not "go to jail" bad, but "The New Zealand government has moved aggressively to shut down this project -- and by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law." type of bad...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The guy even looks a bit like Elon. 1/48 scale net worth too?

<comment><USER24> Shouldn't it be 1 / 110,592 scale net worth though? Saying 1/48th model is a bit misleading as it's 1/48th in 3 dimensions, whereas worth is one dimensional.

<comment><USER25> Not really, since we're really talking about the size of swimming pool you need to hold the coins you dive into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If it's possible to fit that electronic hardware on something the size of a credit card how does it compare to what is used for that purpose in a real orbital rocket other than redundacy features?

<comment><USER27> It's basically the same technology. They're pretty common in airplanes nowadays. Here is an example of a portable unit intended for use as a backup:

[https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.p...](https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.php)

And another one designed to be panel-mounted:

[https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket- panel.php](https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket-panel.php)

If you want to get more details, the search terms you want are EFIS (electronic flight instrument system) and AHRS (attitude and heading reference system, pronounced "ay-harz").

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was just watching this channel yesterday after the SpaceX launch. Anyone know what he uses for the actual rocket engine bit? They don't seem like something that can be throttled.

And yes he definitely looks like Elon!

<comment><USER29> If nothing has changed from my childhood, probably Estes model rocket engines, that are solid fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Longtime supporter of Joe and his incredible model flights. Also worth looking up his Sprite development!

</comment><comment><USER31> Been watching Joe for a long time. The dude deserves more support

</comment><comment><USER32> How high does this thing go? I read the article but as far as I can tell, it was never mentioned.

<comment><USER33> Based on the videos, maybe 100-300ft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's really cool!

I wonder what the bottom-line price tag on something like that would be.

</comment><comment><USER35> Qu8k ([https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html](https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html)) is some impressive amateur rocketry from 2011.

</comment><comment><USER36> Well, not exactly. First stage has 27 Merlin 1D engines.

<comment><USER37> Depends which Falcon. Falcone 9 has 10 Merlin engines, while Heavy has 28.

[https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf](https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow, he is even is trying to design landable boosters like in the real thing! WTF!

</comment><comment><USER39> If SpaceX doesn't hire him, then Space Force surely has an opening!

</comment><comment><USER40> Did it blow up during an engine test?

</comment><comment><USER41> A single guy has probably achieved what a whole division of a large corporation or a large govt agency would not be able to achieve in years

<comment><USER8> In a just world, he would have 1/48th of Elon's fame/fortune too.

<comment><USER42> Unfortunately, sending 1/48 of an astronaut into orbit is not as valuable.

<comment><USER22> At around $3k per kilo to orbit, I'd bet he'd be _very_ happy with the $6k or so 1/48th of a ~100kg astronaut+spacesuit would mean per launch!

He ain't getting anywhere near orbit using Estes motors though... Not even 1/48th of the way to orbit I'd guess...

(Hmmm, spaceflight.com's pricing page says they'll send a 3U 5kg cubesat payload to LEO for $295,000... That's I guess pretty close to "1/24th of an astronaut to orbit"? Minus the ~10,000% surcharge for "manrated" though, I'm guessing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> amazing perseverence, but a bit overproduced :)</comment>