8OD – Arduino form-factor Intel 8086 - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mattmillman.com/8od/ <comment><USER2> There's something funny about using a 37-year-old CPU with a chipset made 20 years later... but the 80C86 is still being made - not cheap though:

[http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/CP80C86-2Z/CP80C86-...](http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/CP80C86-2Z/CP80C86-2Z-ND/1976070)

As far as "DIY x86 computers" are concerned I think the newest CPU someone has managed to use in one is a 386/486:

[http://www.s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/80386%20Boa...](http://www.s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/80386%20Board/80386%20CPU%20Board.htm)

<comment><USER3> You can get an 8086 for $1.49 from Unicorn Electronics.

[http://www.unicornelectronics.com/IC/8000.html](http://www.unicornelectronics.com/IC/8000.html)

<comment><USER4> They are selling 68k's too, awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nezza-_- Awesome board, looks like something I'd love to play with.

But: Currently I again and again hear things like this as a critic against Arduino, Sparkcore etc:

        The current emphasis on highly integrated, dumbed down hobbyist/educational microcontrollers is beginning to bug me.

I am excited that this stuff is becoming accessible now! I loved that Lego Mindstorms brought basic automation programming into a lot of schools, I love that Arduino makes it possible for artists without a programming background to create interactive art etc.pp.

While the 1337-factor might be lower than implementing your own CPU on an FPGA and then using it to control the temperature of your coffee brewer I believe that making this stuff easier to learn can only benefit us.

(To the author: I know you probably don't mean it that way, I just often hear something along the lines of "These things are getting too easy, it's not really geeky!")

<comment><USER5> >>These things are getting to easy, it's not really geeky!

In defense of these opinions, we need at-least somebody in the next generation to understand how the lowest level of technology works. I am told that everybody in my field built a radio communication system in high-school, now its a project for a senior level class.

<comment><USER6> Everything is becoming abstracted, and as that happens, we're spread thinner and thinner

<comment><USER7> I remember a math professor I had relating a discussion he had with another professor about whether to make the students memorize trigonometry rules. The proponent had no comeback for: "Should students be taught to make their own lightbulb before they do their homework at night?"

<comment><USER2> That is funny, since I don't think many maths instructors would agree with giving students calculators and starting with calculus in lieu of teaching them arithmetic first - which is similar to what beginning programmers are being taught these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Long ago I wrote a COFF linker so that I could use Turbo-C for x86 embedded projects (first one was a power line monitor made from wire-wrapped x88). Recently put it in github if anyone is interested: [https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/lang/ali...](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/lang/alink)

I tried to sell this through ads in Midnight Engineering, but it didn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really cool. Initially from the photo I thought it was just a big FPGA emulating an 8086, but then I saw the chunky DIP chips on the other end.

The TP3465 SPI chip mentioned sounds useful — I've been building a single- board 6502 which is CPU bit-banging SPI at 1 MHz, and takes about a minute to fill a small 16-bit color screen. I've wanted to offload that to an SPI chip, but hadn't found any. The downside; the TP3465 chips are about $11 each on Mouser, and don't come in hand-solder-friendly packages.

I mostly came here to write that I'm puzzled by "reasons I shouldn't need to explain" here, though:

> In terms of disclosure of what is inside this CPLD – [...] Its final design > is now almost entirely VHDL. If there's sufficient interest I'll do a good > diagram of it at some point, but for reasons I shouldn't need to explain, I > won't be providing the full source for it just yet.

I could only guess, from most to least likely; (a) it contains proprietary IP that is being used without a license, (b) he considers it too messy to release, (c) he just doesn't want to, or (c) he wants to retain the ability to license his creation.

</comment><comment><USER10> I imagine an old CPU like this would draw a lot more power than anything recent, no? Or is it offset by the fact that it runs a lot slower?

<comment><USER3> It depends. Newer remakes (such as the 80C86) will use less power, but if you use original parts, then they're going to suck power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Incredibly awesome concept for a board, considering the wide spelled use of this processor, I can only imagine the sheer number of projects that could result if this thing ever sees mass production.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow cool idea, and well presented (the whole site and all his projects are a great read)!

</comment><comment><USER13> woah this is amazing! you should write a series of blog posts describing how you made it and share it with the world!</comment>


Ask HN: Why do startups try to hire for more specific skills? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like when large companies (like Google) are hiring software engineers they mainly look for generalists that don't necessarily have experience with any specific technology (like Rails or PHP). But startups tend to look for people with specific skills.<p>Why is that? Are startups potentially missing out on hires that are dissuaded from applying by the overly specific requirements? After all, most web programming is fairly similar, and it doesn't take all that long to get up to speed with a different framework. <comment><USER2> Startups tend to not have the time or ability to train in specific disciplines. Once they find out they need a skill in the team, they can't divert someone from another task (they're already busy!) to learn it. So they hire people with that skill already.

<comment><AUTHOR> OTOH, it's hard to find engineers. So given your choice is between not hiring anyone and hiring someone with slightly different skills from exactly what you want, why do startups prefer the former?

<comment><USER2> Because startups don't have the ability to train.

There's little use in hiring someone that doesn't have the skill you need: all you could hope to do is pay them to sit there for a couple of months reading and practising before you can set them onto your actual product.

<comment><USER3> I understand that, but some of these startup posts have a list of 7-10 technologies. Surely there's some that are essential and others on the "nice to have" list? You want a Django person who knows JQuery, but if they have Rackspace experience rather than AWS, or if it's a Rubyist who knows gem A but not B, it seems like they'd be excluded on some of the job listings.

<comment><USER2> I'm not really sure which posts you refer to.

Job posting tend to mention large frameworks (such as django or rails) or ask for experience with certain vendor software (such as postgres or redis).

Specific libraries would be highly uncommon, as they would only be used for a single task (and not what you deal with every day). I'd be wary of any job posting that does this: they could just have a single problem that they'll get you to solve as an interview question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> engineering resources are precious, diverting one team-member to train a new team member is time-consuming and will render two engineers non-productive.

Compare this to somebody who already knows the technology used, you can explain the basics in a few hours, get him access to the codebase and then answer questions he might have.

</comment><comment><USER5> Startups do not have the cushion or luxury of time and resource compared to larger companies like Google. They usually have a specific tech. stack that they use especially in the early days. OTOH, Google etc. have engineers building things in every possible language. So there is no specific need to only hire say Python engineers.</comment>


Google Wave Patent License (what does this mean?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.waveprotocol.org/patent-license

<comment><USER2> Google promises not to sue you (or rather gives you a license so they can't sue you) for violating any of their patents while implementing the Wave Protocol. Unless you sue them.

Pretty standard for open specifications backed by large companies, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> Leave it to the attorneys to come up with scary stuff. It seems that Google may be learning from Microsoft to push its weight around. I wonder if this would violate antitrust laws?

Under normal circumstances if Google were a smaller company, an inventor whose invention have been infringed by Google, would have the option of shopping around and use another product than Wave. And Google may be entirely in its own right to refuse providing him with a service. However, given the potential of Wave and the enormous size of Google, Wave could possibly completely replace email. Depriving the inventor of the Wave license would cause him irreparable harm since he cannot shop around for a comparable product.Google is facing an antitrust issue. Google is becoming like Microsoft.

Here is another angle: Background: If several persons are co-inventors on a wave invention without having assigned it to a single entity such as a company, then each co-inventor own 100% of the invention. This means that each one can independently conduct business such as leasing or selling 100% of the invention. So let's say that Google infringes on the invention and one of the inventors sues Google for 100% of damage. Google by contract can cancel the license for that one inventor but the other ones can still use the wave license. So one of the inventor needs to be willing to sacrifice himself.

Who would sue Google anyways???? Microsoft???

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross- claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed._

This part piqued my interest. So if I sue some third party because I feel Google's implementation of Wave violates my patent, I lose the license to the Wave patents? Or if I feel that a third party implementation of Wave violates my patents, do I also lose my license?

Eg. if a Wave implementation violates my (say) encryption patent, and I file a lawsuit for patent violation, do I lose my license to the Wave patents?

Seems like a neat way to scare off patent trolls, but I'm not sure I'm interpreting it right.

<comment><USER4> I think you are interpreting it right, although it won't have any effect on pure patent trolls since they don't need to license Google's patents anyway.</comment></comment>


Learning from my web app 23 visits at a time - <AUTHOR> http://juanreyero.com/article/technology/23visits.html

<comment><USER2> Not sure if this is the right place to tell you this, but no one wants to buy a pdf of a star chart. If I want a computer star chart I'll use a program to generate one live. It might not be as pretty as yours, but it's interactive.

Now if you actually printed large (huge?) format posters of the star chart you would have a market.

People would love to print a start chart as visible in a specific special place and time. It would be a great gift for weddings, birthdays, graduation, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the suggestion. I've thought about setting up an agreement with a print shop, where I can send the PDF or PS to them and they do the printing and sending. But before going that route I wanted to figure out if anybody would want a personalized star chart to start with. Looks like I need to look seriously into it.

<comment><USER3> Check <http://blogalia.com/>

There are some professional astronomers blogging over there, doing divulgation. They might be interested. At the very least, they will link the site.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the mention! (I'm the founder of Blogalia :)

IMHO, greaterskies.com is interesting as a project, but:

\- I don't think anyone will pay for simple visual star charts: there are free sites, free desktop programs and free tablet/mobile apps out there.

\- If not for visual, but deep sky: there is 3Atlas from José R. Torres (9, 11 and 13 mag sky atlas): <http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/tools.html> Available for free in PDF.

\- The marketing problem: find your tribe! There are some forums, like cloudynights.com (or <http://www.asociacionhubble.org/portal/index.php/foro> in Spanish), but this are mostly for dedicated observers.

My 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for this article!

I had a comparable experience last week launching an online Markdown editor:

<http://akaya.me>

and nobody noticed, as I blogged about it here:

[http://blog.medusis.com/all-quiet-on-the-western-front- silen...](http://blog.medusis.com/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-silence-its- ha)

But I don't think you're right when you say " _it's possible that nobody wants what greaterskies offers today. And most of the features that I've been adding for the last week are probably irrelevant._ " Well, it's _possible_ , yes, but you don't know that one way or the other.

Nothing happened because nobody saw your announcement (or mine); nobody saw it because HN gets hit by a deluge of posts at any time of the day, and luck has a big part in deciding which ones don't sink immediately. (Time of day matters, but time of week matters also; I since noticed that slow days (Sundays esp.) are better for the "Show HN" type of message.)

I think what we need are two things:

\- on the functional side, beta-testers that are dependable (as opposed to casual); maybe that means they're paid, but maybe we can do with "honest friends"

\- on the marketing side, a _story_ , of which your post is a start (I'm still looking for mine).

Don't give up! and please keep us posted.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for building Akayame bambax. Pretty neat.

A few comments:

1) Please add one or more licenses so developers can include Akayame in their projects with confidence. A couple of examples:

<http://jquery.org/license/>

<https://github.com/jquery/sizzle/blob/master/LICENSE>

2) The footer and menu are below the fold in my browsers in the Converter and Editor views so I need to scroll to see the menu and "Yet Another Markdown Editor" text.

3) The footer could do with improved styling : text overlaps the border, bullets and links use default styles. Minor quibbles but improvements would improve the professionalism of the site. Image here:

[http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011006_Akayame_footer.j...](http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011006_Akayame_footer.jpg)

4) Landing page does not convey to the visitors what the site is about (and"Yet Another Markdown Editor" is below the fold).

5) Adding a page or two with keyword rich text explaining the project ("jQuery powered online Markdown editor") and background ("inspired by other Showdown online Markdown editor projects") could help with search engines listings.

6) Have you considered hosting the code on Github for increased exposure and link juice?

<comment><USER5> Many thanks for your comments (we're pretty OT now and I'm sorry to piggyback on greaterskies story).

I'm clearly design-challenged but I don't really know what to do about it (except hiring someone who, unlike me, knows what they're doing; but I don't have the cash). But I did test the footer in many browsers and am surprised to see that it can fall below the fold; I guess I'll test again.

What do you mean by "developers can include Akayame in their projects": right now it's just a webapp, the code isn't available and there's no API, so why would you need a licence?

(The code would need some serious cleaning before being shown publicly; as for an API I don't think it's applicable, although I'm working on a sister project to transform HTML to clean HTML and/or Markdown, with a public API).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea. I am trying to buy a chart for my wedding date in Pittsburgh, but the download after preview fails to happen. I using Chrome on a Mac. Maybe I am using it wrong. I don't know.

Anyway, here are my feature requests:

1) See what a chart looks like immediately. Can be pre-generated. (Someone already said this in a previous comment)

2) Would like to annotate my chart with notes or custom title, subtitle, etc

3) Share chart on various social media sites as an interactive widget or simply a photo. (Someone already said this in a previous comment)

4) Print to a T-shirt or mug on zazzle.com or other T-shirt site (you can probably make money here as an affiliate).

5) This is a little crazy, but maybe overlay my wedding gift registry items on top of the star chart so that people can buy our wedding registry items in a cool and interactive way instead of navigating through multiple totally crappy wedding registry sites. (again you can probably make money as an affiliate here)... it's just an idea...

Good luck with the project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas!

The problem with the preview request is that the server is struggling. Beefing it up right now on AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two suggestions:

1\. After filling in the info I started looking where to click next and was a bit surprised that it is above to the left of the map, I think you have to make the interface flow a bit more intuitive. 2\. It would be great to see the image in small format before I pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the feedback. Maybe I should put the next click to the right? I'll certainly try it out. As for your second point, you should be able to see the image in large format before paying: a link appears after you have input the map data where you can ask for a preview, and a full-sized one will be created for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks. A little tip: Make the star chart in the blog link to <http://greaterskies.com/> . I clicked it more than once before I realized I had to find the link in the text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The traffic from HN has reduced my previous statistics to noise, so I've thought I'd as well implement some of the feedback I've got, online now. Also, the server is suffering and I cannot try to set load balancing because I need to run to a meeting (why didn't I before?). So I've added feedback to let you know at which steps the server is struggling, asking for some patience.

Thanks everybody!

</comment><comment><USER10> Might be attractive for people celebrating anniversaries or having kids. Sort of a cosmic snapshot of that particular time and place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the cosmic snapshot approach, maybe with the rest of the cosmos left as an exercise for the reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome job man!

Ease of use requests for the star chart page:

      1. GeoIP db to get current location
      2. Autofill location
      3. autofill date
      4. autofill local time

GEO IP: [http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/03/31/3-free-ways-to- ge...](http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/03/31/3-free-ways-to-geolocate-by- ip/)

Viral ideas:

      1. Allow creation of star charts from FB data (eg. City / DOB)
      2. Add FB share link.
      3. People buy star charts for friends

It pains me that people believe in this psuedo-science, but will make you money ideas:

      1. Allow some kind of astrological star chart that is
         tangentially related to their astrological sign.
      2. Pair with FB (eg. Fred's Libra Starchart)

Btw, yesterday was my birthday and if I could have posted this on my wall it would have been awesome. (Not the astrology part)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And thank you for the pointer to the geoip options. I know I should look into astrology, but it kind of pains me. And I'll check out FB pairing as well.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'd put the astrology one up on a separate domain.

For the astrology thing you may want to see if you can join some kind of affiliate program and put a link in the PDF might pay more in aggregate giving them away for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome project! I do have one feature request (preferably before my wife's birthday...), which is the ability to add custom text as a heading of some kind.

For example, I would be ordering a picture of the night sky over Rome on a particular night, and it would be nice if the poster said so - not everyone knows Rome's lat./long. off by heart.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I'll add it. Should it appear at the top, encircling the map, or at the bottom?

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A star chart of the Star Wars "Universe" would be the best thing ever. (and I know there would be licensing issues)

Also, what about EVE Online players, would it be cool to offer them some kind of print out?

(Think of any other persistent games, or imaginary universes).

Think of things people are passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is great, but I ain't paying for anything I can't see. The flow should be Enter Location -> Image Preview -> Share-on-FB or Pay-to-Print. That's your MVP. Hard-Code it for a few locations or show some random image previews.

<comment><USER14> My bad. Your product does everything, but in a totally non-obvious way. Please do yourself a favour and read the book "Don't make me think"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I kind of know I am obvious-challenged. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great site, but I found the interface very confusing. It took me ages to figure out what to do next at every step. The resizing text is an ok idea, but currently it's more distracting than guiding. Hope that's helpful. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Maybe I could make arrows appear, or something. Need to try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is the chart supposed to be interpreted? Is it me looking up at the sky on a particular night seeing a a 360-degree view of the stars?

Also, how are future positions determined?

</comment><comment><USER17> great article - impressive what you've done there (connecting all the different pieces, including Common Lisp and AWS!!). love the charts too!

</comment><comment><USER18> thanks for sharing Juan. I think HN managed to bring <http://greaterskies.com/> down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. And I cannot figure out how to scale it up without changing the DNS to point to a load balancer. Oh well.</comment></comment>


How Facebook generated $709M from adblock users - <AUTHOR> https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/facebook-adblock-audience/ <comment><USER2> So Facebook figured out how to cram ads down the throats of people that took specific action to avoid them. Why on earth would advetisers pay to display ads to this group of people? The only group that benefits is Facebook.</comment>


Show HN: List of crypto currency activity on Reddit and Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.coinshilling.com <comment><USER2> Can you share some insight into how you are counting mentions of coins on Reddit? For example, the coin Golem has the potential for overlap with the character Golem in Lord of the Rings. Are you browsing a pre-set number of subreddits?

Likewise would love some clarity on how you're collecting twitter stream data and properly tagging the data to a respective coin--are you using preset tags?

Would love to see an API endpoint for this type of thing. Kudos!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've built a tool that keeps track of the activity of top30 crypto coins on Reddit and Twitter. Looking for some feedback!

<comment><USER3> Would be cool to add sentiment analysis to this.

[https://konghq.com/blog/list-of-20-sentiment-analysis- apis/](https://konghq.com/blog/list-of-20-sentiment-analysis-apis/)

Also, would be cool to have an api and/or historical data.

I've been looking at a way to build a crypto trading bot based on sentiment analysis as well as price movement.

<comment><USER3> might want to add some of the forums

ie. Golem: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1655002.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1655002.0)

worldcoinindex has discussion links on a lot of their coin pages

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice interesting, will look at that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand what the time scale is here. Bitcoin is down by 18% ... over what?

<comment><AUTHOR> The percentages on the homepage are the last hour compared to the hour before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> More activity means more people posting memes, fake rumors and "to the moon" kind of stuff. Do not underestimate human stupidity.

<comment><AUTHOR> More people posting memes about a coin, might indicate more interest in that coin. Which might say a thing about the exchange rate.

Check this image for example: [http://coinshilling.com/images/demograph.jpg](http://coinshilling.com/images/demograph.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> you should offer a free account to collect emails. maybe track one coin for free. with a daily highlight email or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will think about that!</comment></comment>


Wil Shipley on OCD and depression - <AUTHOR> http://wilshipley.com/blog/2005/05/on-being-crazy.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks to Will for sharing a well written article.

I am careful not to diagnose myself or others and using labels: OCD, ADD, depressive, etc... The reason I am careful about labeling is I don't think the diagnoses are accurate enough. I have concluded that maybe we can't always identify the disorders, maybe we can't cure the disorders, but we can coup with and more openly discuss the symptoms.

If you are someone that suffers from the behavioral patterns discussed in the article, try various methods to break the behavior bit by bit.

Here are tools I use: exercise, cook a meal (it has a beginning and an end. You get to enjoy it in a short time frame. Not like software development which never ends.)

What tools do you use?

<comment><USER3> _I am careful not to diagnose myself or others and using labels: OCD, ADD, depressive, etc... The reason I am careful about labeling is I don't think the diagnoses are accurate enough._

Any psychologist worth their salt would agree with you: Diagnoses are blunt instruments which we use to describe what are, in reality, complex and unique collections of individual traits and tendencies. There is indeed a risk in "labeling" someone.

But, on the other hand, psychologists often do it anyway. Because the labels also have advantages. The biggest one is: Labels force you to acknowledge the existence of correlations. It is a sad but true fact that some people commit suicide. Other people drink themselves to death. But it's very, very hard to look at your best friend -- or at yourself -- and think _this person is about to kill themselves_ or _this person is an alcoholic_. Your mind just slides off the subject, like water off a waxed car. You don't want to believe that, so you don't. That's why people always act so surprised. "Who could have predicted that such a successful writer could kill themselves?"

The answer is that sometimes you can't predict it. But one useful way of predicting it is to have a list of warning signs, and to apply (as clinically and scientifically as possible) a special label to anyone who exhibits seven out of ten warning signs. You can't always just listen to your gut, because your gut can be a _hopeless_ optimist -- you force yourself to listen to the label. Then we can take action based on the label -- we give people insurance money to pay for extra therapy, give them access to special drugs, invite them out for coffee instead of beer, encourage them to call (or not to call) their moms, and/or make allowances for their behavior ("Oh, perhaps he's _not_ sending an obvious social signal that he hates my guts! Perhaps he's just having an Asperger's moment!" Is that a glib diagnosis? You bet. But if only I had a dollar for every time that explanation has come in handy...)

Another advantage of labels is that they _literally_ aren't personal. We treat the labelled condition as if it were somehow separate from a person's regular personality -- and that's often _not_ a bug in our labelling system, but a feature! It enables us to distinguish "a guy who sometimes seems nice but is in fact a complete jerk" from "a nice guy, except when he's drunk". We can distinguish "a guy who just doesn't have it together" from "a clinically depressed guy", each of whom requires different treatment. You can try to help the first guy cheer up by encouraging him to change his life, or buying him a pizza, or perhaps just mindlessly telling him to "look on the bright side". You can't do that for the clinically depressed, as Will tells us in no uncertain terms:

"Some people have never dealt with depression, and they can't figure out how it's different from 'being sad.' 'I've been sad! I don't whine about it! I just get over it.' Yes, that's nice. Also, not the same."

As someone who was once depressed, but turned out not to have _depression_ , I tend to think that the label is very useful. Otherwise I might have tried antidepressant treatments _before_ I tried changing my city and my job. Conversely, if I _did_ have depression, but were unwilling to accept that diagnosis, I might spend my time moving randomly from city to city instead of accepting my condition, seeking long-term treatment, and explaining it to my friends.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, that was the most clear and useful definition of labeling I have ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As always these articles are wonderful to read. I think the hardest thing for people without depression to conceptualize is the crushing weight of insignificant tasks. How picking up a single sock becomes a literal impossibility. How the implications of _acting_ , in any way, are like trying to assume every single associated burden simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great article. For folks that don't understand what depression feels like, an article like this is great.

I think a good explanation of depression for someone that has never really experienced it is: "Take the worse day of your life. Feel those feelings. Now pretend that every day of your life is like that from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep." If there is hell on earth, it looks alot like depression. Unfortunately, most of this is just biochemistry happening in your brain. Fortunately, there are tools today that can help.

It's funny, people can relate when they see someone with a broken leg or a huge scar. You can't see mental disorders and if you haven't felt them, they don't seem very real.

If there is someone you love that has a mental disorder, nothing you can quickly spat at them will help, "Oh, you'll get better" or "It'll go away, just be patient." anymore than you want to hear the same things when you break up with a girlfriend or lose a family member. See if they want help, help them get help if they do, and support them.

If YOU think you have a mental disorder like depression, please go see a professional. They are trained in a variety of techniques that they can give you to help manage your life better in the face of whatever problems you feel you are having. They want to help you, they want to heal you. But you have to take that step first.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to have some depressed moments, but after a big tragedy in my family, i realized i had no time to waste, and if i ever had any depressing moments, they were rarely longer than a day or two. Apparently work heals pain fairly well, it distracts you from the depressing thoughts and the productivity gives you a feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction, but the side effect is that the work is hard and frustrating. I could say that im "crazy", but not in the medical meaning.

</comment><comment><USER8> The comments on this forum are awesome. I wish the whole intertron were like this.

-Wil

<comment><USER9> Stick around and add your own. Welcome to Hacker News.

Also, it's customary for new members to let me take their Tesla for a spin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _You look around you and realize that everyone and everything you love is going to go away, sooner or later, and you don't believe anything good will replace them._

Isn't that exactly how things are? It's not an illusion, that's just the truth. Most people have simply developed a solid sense of denial so they ignore that until they die - or at least until they get old and all their friends start dying.

<comment><USER11> In some psychological tests, people with clinical depression demonstrated a more accurate view of reality than mentally healthy people.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism> <http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr05/realism.html>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I post this b/c articles and comments about depression seem very common here and on programming.reddit. I'm curious if OCD and depression go together?

<comment><USER12> They're both mental illnesses. While common independently, the issues that cause other mental illnesses often result in depression as a side issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking more along the lines that if someone is OCD they can probably detect incomplete plans and lines of thought more easily than others, and so see in general that most ideas are not well supported or understood by people. Thus, a person's society and culture in general may not seem very well thought out, which can be a source of anxiety and depression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Waylon Jennings said, "I've always been crazy, but it's kept me from going insane." And I'd have to agree with him...</comment>


If not for Apple, Siri would have been preinstalled on every Droid - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906606/siri-was-going-to-be-preinstalled-on-all-verizon-android-smartphones

<comment><USER2> So, only if you buy a phone from Verizon.</comment>


A History of Programming Games 1961-1989 - <AUTHOR> http://www.retroprogramming.com/2009/09/history-of-programming-games-1961-1989.html

<comment><USER2> There's a neat Reddit sub that is fairly new, if you want to have a look at people coding for "retro" consoles and computers, but in the modern day[0]. It's quite awesome.

Slightly off topic: it's not retro, but I have written and am currently playing with again writing homebrew for the GameCube, which is awesome fun :)

[0]: [http://www.reddit.com/r/retrogamedev](http://www.reddit.com/r/retrogamedev)

</comment><comment><USER3> We used to have Core War tournaments in college. It was first an assignment (write the VM) and at the end all the students warriors would compete vs each other and we watched the finals in the big amphi. One of the students even wrote an opengl visualization. Great memories!

</comment><comment><USER4> The Byte article on Robotwar can be be found here: [http://archive.org/stream/byte- magazine-1981-12/1981_12_BYTE...](http://archive.org/stream/byte- magazine-1981-12/1981_12_BYTE_06-12_Computer_Games#page/n35/mode/2up)

It's still cool to read.

Moreover, Robotwar inspired a forth-like clone called Grobots: [http://grobots.sourceforge.net/](http://grobots.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure it's after 1989 but another good one is Robocode: [http://robocode.sourceforge.net](http://robocode.sourceforge.net)

<comment><USER6> Another after 1989 is Carnage Heart for PS1. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_Heart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_Heart)

The complexity of it was mind-boggling, especially for a console game. The instruction manual was hundreds of pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember playing Core Wars on the BBC Micro, good times.</comment>


Why I started blogging? (And Expectations) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wordhunt.xyz/2018/10/22/why-i-started-blogging-and-expectations.html <comment><AUTHOR> Do you guys have any feedback on my blog, or what I should change/fix?

* font

* spacing

* colors

* add more projects to the projects page? (should I include the dead projects too?)

* write extensively(hobbies,childhood,job history,current status) on about page?

* add a share to HN and Reddit buttons?

<comment><USER2> I find the font suboptimal to read, and the loads of __bold __text doesn 't make it easier. The line breaks seem strange, some lines are a lot longer than others. It looks like every comma is followed by a line break?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, felt the same way :)

Thanks for the feedback</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla, software and disruption - <AUTHOR> https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/8/29/tesla-software-and-disruption <comment> brian-armstrong Why are touchscreens in cars touted as innovation? They are a usability disaster. It is much easier to, say, change the A/C power when the control is a physical control I can reach for and identify by touch.

<comment><USER2> I know that I successfully used hybrid button-touchscreen interface for my Prius for over a decade. It was great and resulted in no accidents or even distractions.

It's modular so additional features can be integrated by pure software so upgrades are possible.

Sure 90% touchscreen (some stuff is still manual) sounds crazy but Model3 owners don't seem to complain too much. I'd bet an 80% interface would work great today.

Enter a perfected voice control and L4 auto drive and we'll officially be living in the future.

<comment> brian-armstrong 90%? There really aren't very many controls in a car, does that mean headlightd and windshield wipers are not on stalks but in a touchscreen?

<comment><USER3> Yes both on touchscreen headlight is automatic same with wipers thought.there are also keybindings to the multi way scroll wheels on the steering wheel. It also modify bindings based on last action.if you manually had to enable wipers it switches the scroll wheels to activate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read a lot of articles on TSLA and usually fail to see any mention of their power business. Granted, this is a small part of revenue right now ($1.1BN for FY17 of $11.8BN total), but growing fast and with some highly visible data points (Puerto Rico, South Australia). They are going to win multi-billion- dollar contracts if the US or other countries decide to rebuild their grids. As a TSLA shareholder, this opportunity actually gets me more excited about the future of the company than autonomy. It seems to me they have less competition doing huge battery installations than building autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER5> There's even less of a moat for Tesla in selling batteries to utilities than there is for their cars.

And SolarCity was heading to zero. It was acquired by Tesla because Elon had to bail himself out or the myth of Elon Musk as Tony Stark would have been undone. But also because he along with his cousins would have lost a lot of money. That's compounded by the fact that Elon is significantly personally leveraged and any loss of confidence in Elon Musk Inc. or a decline in his holdings would imperil his other companies [1].

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-supports-his- business...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-supports-his-business- empire-with-unusual-financial-moves-1461781962)

<comment><USER6> Especially since Tesla doesn't make cells. They buy from Panasonic. Panasonic competes directly with Tesla in home and bulk energy storage.[1]

[1] [https://na.panasonic.com/us/energy-solutions/battery- storage...](https://na.panasonic.com/us/energy-solutions/battery- storage/battery-storage)

<comment><USER7> That product is not made by Panasonic but by Pika Energy ([https://www.pika- energy.com/harbor-battery/](https://www.pika-energy.com/harbor-battery/)).

Never heard of Pika before? Me neither.

Which is why they are not as much a threat to Tesla's Powerwall as you claim.

When you order from Tesla ([https://www.tesla.com/powerwall](https://www.tesla.com/powerwall)) you get some inkling of how much it'll cost.

When you order from Pika ([https://www.pika- energy.com/purchase/](https://www.pika-energy.com/purchase/))? "Call us".

I yet have to see any serious competition to Tesla's Powerwall. BMW tried to compete and they folded ([https://electrek.co/2018/04/30/mercedes-benz-kills- tesla-pow...](https://electrek.co/2018/04/30/mercedes-benz-kills-tesla- powerwall-killer-energy-storage-device/)).

<comment><USER8> The other solar providers are usually done the traditional car way. You find some local company (akin to a car dealership) to install your panels, and they'll tell you how much it costs.

EnergySage does give you some insight to the price before you buy though.

Basically, you don't buy the battery from Pika energy, you buy it from a local dealer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What "massive amount of data" from Tesla? They don't send all the video back to HQ. Tesla owners have observed large uploads, but apparently they are software crash dumps.

<comment><USER9> It's probably a representation of the video data that has value to providing autonomy. Plus all the path & geo data. With a few hundred thousand cars collecting it, I'd say that's "massive".

<comment><USER10> You can also opt out of their monitoring of their car. I've wondered what the impact would be if I opted out on mine.

<comment><USER9> Zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get why Tesla added the self driving stuff at all. Just seems like a lot of wasted investment that keeps the price of the car high. They could have released a much cheaper model 3 without it, and likely deal with less bad press from their cars killing their owners.

<comment><USER3> It's not mandatory to buy the self driving car. They want it on the car regardless of the customer buys it or not. They have other uses for the hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tesla is going to find it increasingly difficult as new competitors come online. For example, Autocar just gave Jaguar's I-Pace a positive review in a head-to-head comparison [1]. IMHO the I-Pace is a good-looking car, and has a superior interior to the Tesla. As more manufacturers catch up, can Tesla survive?

[1] [https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-model-s- vs...](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-model-s-vs-jaguar-i- pace-ev-twin-test)

<comment><USER13> The i-pace looks nice, but really showcases the technical lead that Tesla has. The i-pace is bigger, with less interior space, and poorer energy efficiency, which ultimately leads to less-than-great range.

Maybe a second generation of it will be competitive.

<comment><USER12> The I-Pace range isn't that much different from the Tesla. Anyway, the point isn't that the I-Pace is better, it's that it -- and the many other EVs coming from major manufacturers -- is competitive enough to take sales away from Tesla.

<comment><USER10> there's no supercharger like network for the i-pace, making it only a city car. Tesla can drive from seattle to bamff, or portland to san diego or across the country. no other car can do that.

<comment><USER12> Tesla has no monopoly on charging stations, which are popping up everywhere. In the UK, for example: [https://www.zap-map.com/live/](https://www.zap- map.com/live/)

<comment><USER10> Agreed, they just staked out a lot of the good spots way ahead of the other companies. Tesla needs some pressure from other companies at least trying to compete. That requires a high power charging network, dealer interest in selling, good cars, and enough to sell. Up to now the competitors are mostly 0/4, although the bolt seems good, as is the i-pace. The i3 was a wasted opportunity (tiny gas tank, too small a battery). Let's see if the next gen is any good, and if they can built enough charging stations to matter. Europe seems way ahead of the us on high power charging (except for tesla).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Excellent article with well-reasoned analysis of the range of future possibilities for Tesla. But one disappointing omission is any mention of ride-hailing - surely it will have enormous consequences for the entire auto industry because people will for the most part stop buying cars and switch to autonomous taxis. This will (a) reduce the demand for number of new cars produced; (b) reduce the profit from each car (nobody really cares about the color or horsepower or brand of the taxi they take to work)

<comment><USER15> If Tesla is the first to crack autonomy they will win, regardless of ride- hailing. If Tesla doesn't crack autonomy they're likely to go under, regardless of ride-hailing.

<comment><USER16> > _If Tesla is the first to crack autonomy they will win, regardless of ride- > hailing._

I think that's a bit strong. People don't replace their cars all that often, and no massive increase in demand for Tesla's cars is going to cause their production numbers to jump.

If they get full autonomy out five years ahead of Waymo and Cruise (good luck), they still probably won't win a dominant share of the market longer- term.

> _If Tesla doesn 't crack autonomy they're likely to go under_

Shrugs, I think autonomy could seriously hurt them, _whoever_ invents it. Tesla builds "a better car" \-- nice acceleration, clean interface, more reliable -- and autonomous ride-hailing in cities essentially leads to the cars themselves not being an important point of differentiation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think an important advantage is vertical integration. Similar to Apple and iPhone, Tesla controls most of the stack. They can do a lot more than their competitors.

<comment><USER18> There are a ton of differences between Apple and Tesla. Most noticeably, Apple actually made a profit selling the iPhone.

6-years after the release of the Model S, Telsa has yet to turn a profit. And instead, is facing bankruptcy within the next two years unless it can roll over its debt or otherwise raise yet a few more billion $$$$.

Compare and contrast: the iPhone was released in 2007. The Tesla Model S was released in 2012. Steve Jobs died in 2011 (4-years after the iPhone). You can tell that that Apple was a successful company by the time Steve Jobs died.

Furthermore, Apple accomplished its iPhone launch during the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis. In contrast, Tesla's rampup is during the cheapest money ever to be seen in modern history: low interest rates and a grand bull market.

The political, environmental, and financial headwinds Apple faced during its time to create the iPhone were exponentially more difficult than Tesla's. And yet, Apple turned a profit and became a lasting company. The same cannot be said yet of Tesla.

<comment><USER19> "The political, environmental, and financial headwinds Apple faced during its time to create the iPhone were exponentially more difficult than Tesla's."

I get that you might not be bullish on Tesla, but do you seriously believe this?

<comment><USER18> Were you around during the 2008 financial recession?

Major US banks were literally going bankrupt, credit dried up. There was almost no opportunity to borrow money, the stock market was crashing, no opportunity to IPO or perform a secondary offering.

Tesla is operating under one of the greatest, and longest, bull markets the US has ever seen. The great 2011 to 2018 (maybe longer??) boom. Tesla has been able to either secondary-offering, or borrow, roughly billion+ each year, every year, since its IPO.

During recent years, its borrowed or otherwise raised over $2 billion / year.

<comment><USER19> I was. And all that might even be relevant if you weren't comparing Tesla to Apple.

The iPhone actually launched in 2007, the same year in which Apple generated over $24B in revenue and was sitting on $15B in cash at the end of the fiscal year. In 2008, they did $37B in revenue and ended the fiscal year sitting on about $25B in cash.

The claim that Apple's financial challenges with launching a smartphone were "exponentially" greater than Tesla's, is laughable.

<comment><USER18> > And all that might even be relevant if you weren't comparing Tesla to Apple.

I'm not comparing Apple to Tesla. The parent article is. And I'm trying to point out how utterly silly the comparison is.

Quote the first paragraph:

> When Nokia people looked at the first iPhone, they saw a not-great phone > with some cool features that they were going to build too, being produced at > a small fraction of the volumes they were selling. They shrugged. "No 3G, > and just look at the camera!"

> When many car company people look at a Tesla, they see a not-great car with > some cool features that they're going to build too, being produced at a > small fraction of the volumes they're selling. "Look at the fit and finish, > and the panel gaps, and the tent!"

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>--

This comparison is fundamentally insane, and shouldn't be the starting point of any serious discussion.

<comment><USER19> You said: "The political, environmental, and financial headwinds Apple faced during its time to create the iPhone were exponentially more difficult than Tesla's."

I brought attention to this and showed how ridiculous of an assertion it was.

And now you're saying: "I'm not comparing Apple to Tesla. The parent article is. And I'm trying to point out how utterly silly the comparison is."

The other quotes you've added are all irrelevant. You're all over the place. Give it a rest and come back when you have a properly thought out point to make with some evidence to support it.

<comment><USER20> You did say it was ridiculous, but never proved it. Apple may have had money in the bank but selling a luxury product in the middle of a financial crisis was an up hill battle.

Consumer confidence was at all time lows and disposable income saw the biggest drop since the great depression. People were more concerned about whether they'd still have a job and savings rates upticked dramatically while salaries fell.

<comment><USER19> Have you looked at Apple's performance during that time period? As I pointed out in my previous post, Apple was sitting on $25B in cash in 2008. Additionally, their annual revenue nearly tripled and their profit quadrupled from 2007-2010. That's not an up hill battle.

All your talk about the economic environment during the recession is irrelevant because Apple had $25B cash in the bank and the iPhone was a hit, even though it was a luxury item being sold during the recession. The massive scale of their business and their overall success insulated them from the larger ramifications of the economic downturn. Tesla is operating in the opposite economic environment today, but they are not as financially surefooted as Apple was during the launch of the iPhone. So, to get back to the point, to claim that the financial challenges Apple faced bringing the iPhone to market were exponentially more difficult than Tesla's, just isn't true.

<comment><USER20> Yes and making the iPhone a hit is a lot harder when your customers don't have any money to spend.

Nobody is saying Apple couldn't afford the R&D to build the physical phones.

<comment><USER19> It's not harder when you have $25B in cash to spend on fancy marketing, advertising, promotion etc. Do you not understand how massive of an advantage that is? It effectively makes you recession proof. Additionally, you can look at Apple's financials to see that they had no problem selling millions of iPhones through the recession. In fact Q4 of 2009 was their most profitable quarter ever (up until that point) which was the tail end of the recession. It was a radically successful launch by all metrics.

Any way you look at it, launching the iPhone, given Apple's cash, marketing muscle, and hw/sw expertise, wasn't as challenging (even in a recession)as bringing an electric vehicle to market and it by no means was "exponentially more difficult" – in the words of the OP.

I don't have anything more to add to this discussion. I think it's clear that the OP's claim is incredibly uninformed and wildly inaccurate.

<comment><USER18> > It's not harder when you have $25B in cash to spend on fancy marketing, > advertising, promotion etc. Do you not understand how massive of an > advantage that is?

Come on. Its Mr. Musk's decision to make a company take advantage of debt markets instead of waiting for a few years for the Roadster or Model S to make some profits. Tesla's current financial situation is 100% the decision of Musk.

Musk chose debt and stock offerings because he wanted to take advantage of bull market conditions. He's received something on the order of ~$10 Billion from investors, either from the debt market or the stock market (IPOs or Secondary offerings).

If Tesla were to try its strategy of "IPO to get a ton of money each year, every year" during any __other __time in US history, it would have literally come across a recession and run out of money.

The Gigafactory was literally built on top of debt and stock offerings. Tesla never had that money to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something missing from this article: Tesla doesn't necessarily need to solve the vision only SLAM/Autonomy problem itself. If anyone solves the problem, and is willing to sell it. Tesla can immediately license it and turn their fleet of 200k+ Autopilot 2 cars into self driving cars overnight.

<comment><USER22> > Tesla can immediately license it

Aren't they already licensing the second generation from Nvidia on Nvidia hardware?

> Autopilot 2 cars into self driving cars overnight.

That's presuming that the current sensor arrays, computing power and their arrangements will be compatible with the new technology.

<comment><USER3> No. Tesla does not use Nvidia software libraries afaik. They do license the socs and gpus on a board designed by tesla. Based on the drive px1 reference design. Being changed in 6-8 months to a custom made asic made specifically for self driving by Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> it seems the article boils down to the autonomy puzzle in Tesla. Could Tesla make the autonomy a realization with their approach? would waymo approach be better in the future?

One thing I think that is missing, although it mentioned people love their Tesla and so is other thing in life. It is the fact that I felt that this is derived from the way Tesla designed the car, it is intuitive just like when the first Iphone introduced. There is no whistle and bells like the traditional car. Just like iphone compare to Nokia.

My big take away is harder for the car company to become a software company than a software company become a car company. Not to mentioned as a car company, it has lots of 'legacy' or baggage that they have to deal with.

The works is two times harder I think for an incumbent to become a software company as a compare software company to become a hardware company. First: As an incumbent they have to unlearned the old way of doing or thinking about what a car company is. Second: If they are successful at the first one, then they have to learn how to do the software.

While for Tesla, is only 1 step which is to learn how to make car (about the hardware). Tesla does not need to unlearn about things because it has no legacy.

In my experience it is harder to unlearn about things rather than learning about things. I might be wrong :)

<comment><USER24> > It is the fact that I felt that this is derived from the way Tesla designed > the car, it is intuitive just like when the first Iphone introduced.

I beg to differ. The iPhone was intuitive in that all the (built-in) apps were nicely laid out so you could easily interact with them while you are looking at the phone and giving it most of your attention. Kind of like a Tesla is nicely laid out so that you can mostly easily figure out how to, say, adjust the ventilation while looking at the big display and giving it a decent amount of attention.

This is far better than the car I grew up with that made you press the totally unintuitive recirculate button when you wanted recirculation.

</sarcasm>

To Tesla's credit, their on/off/drive/reverse control is vastly superior to anyone else's. Heck, several brands still screw up their "off" button badly enough that it kills people by CO poisoning.

<comment><USER25> > To Tesla's credit, their on/off/drive/reverse control is vastly superior to > anyone else's.

They got it from Mercedes, as well as all the other steering wheel stalks (lights, window washers, cruise control), as well as the driver door window and mirrors control pad.

Good on them for selecting the best on the market, but it's not their invention.

<comment><USER24> As far as I know, Teslas are unique or nearly unique in that you can put the car in park and exit the car and there is no risk that you accidentally leave the car on. Certainly in Toyota vehicles (even brand new) you can arrive at your destination, do the wrong sequence of button presses, and end up with the car in park (so it won't roll), with the engine physically off (because the car has automatic stop-start, so it is likely to turn off the engine by itself when you park) and exit the car, and end up with the car in a state that will _restart_ the engine when it starts to cool down or when the 12V system wants to be topped off and start emitting CO. In your garage.

I've made this mistake myself, although not in a garage, and I've noticed it before I actually exited the car. But a surprising number of people have actually died due to this UI failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> for anyone who maybe got confused SLAM stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping.

edit: I think if it is possible to do SLAM without LIDAR waymo will definitely beat TESLA to the punch since waymo has an absurd amount of vision data labelled with the lidar-measured-depth.

<comment><USER27> Speaking of that. I'd think we could possibly train on simulations. We'd have the 3d information plus the rendered 2d camera view.

<comment><USER26> I don't know if people do this for vision yet but I know some people doing this for RL for robotic control.

<comment><USER3> Google has a simulation for their cars that does this. Nvidia has a hw suit for this purpose too and for testing autopilot hardware by feeding it data from another rack/server

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "That is, it's entirely possible that Waymo, or someone else, gets autonomy to work in 202x with a $1000 or $2000 LIDAR and vision sensor suite and Tesla still doesn't have it working with vision alone."

In this scenario there still may be an upside for Tesla. For Waymo to cover the world in LIDAR-equipped cars will take decades. Tesla already sells cars all over the world. The Tesla car sharing network may scale extremely quickly as a result. Even if Waymo takes some markets first, once Tesla has autonomy working, they can be in most markets at the flip of a switch.

Since the cars participating in the sharing network would be from Tesla purchasers, people may purchase the cars as an investment, meaning there would be no capital cost to Tesla in scaling their network. They just need to be able to produce enough Model 3s and get autonomy working. Then they can take profits from both the sale of the car and the clip of the car sharing network.

<comment><USER29> Is LIDAR actually better than video? If I understand LIDAR correctly, it gives a 1D array of depth data and is fairly limited in either resolution or speed. Video provides much more data at higher speed, and it seems like it'd be easier to identify objects from 2D color images. Stereo (never mind eight cameras) can be used to derive depth information.

But I'm not a practitioner, so educate me. How does LIDAR beat video?

<comment><USER28> I was quoting the article, but I think LIDAR is a bit more like having a 3D model of the world around the vehicle. The processing of a 1D array into a usable point cloud is not of concern at the frontier of autonomous vehicle research.

My understanding is that the main reason Tesla would choose video instead is that cameras are super-cheap in comparison to LIDAR, and theoretically good enough if you have AI that can understand what the cameras are seeing. I have a feeling that Musk is pushing OpenAI toward researching the technology that Tesla will need to make their approach work. I hope they are successful; it is probably the fastest path toward ubiquitous autonomous vehicles. It's likely that Waymo can get theirs working faster, but they can't scale the distribution side as fast as Tesla could.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > There's an old car industry joke that you can see the organization chart of > a car company in the dashboard, and also see that the steering wheel team > hates the gear stick team.

So, Conway's Law then! Can anyone tell us more about this car industry adage?

<comment><USER31> yea I loved seeing that but a quick googling didn't net me anything more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If batteries are getting so cheap why isn't anyone making battery powered: chainsaws, full size vacuum cleaners, jet skis, ride on mowers? All of those would be revolutionary.

<comment><USER32> Most tool brands (milwaukee, dewalt, ryobi) are transitioning from tool companies to battery companies. Lots of cheap tools and expensive batteries.

Also, battery powered chainsaws (husqvarna is well regarded for their chainsaws): [https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/chainsaws/536li- xp/966...](https://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/chainsaws/536li- xp/966729174/)

battery powered riding lawnmowers (ryobi not well known for ride-on mowers): [https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-38-in-75-Ah-Battery- Electr...](https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-38-in-75-Ah-Battery-Electric- Rear-Engine-Riding-Lawn-Mower-RY48110/300246266)

<comment><USER33> Battery powered chainsaws are definitely a thing and actually work pretty well, even on medium sized trees. Not needing hearing protection is a huge benefit in my opinion.

<comment><USER24> And DeWalt makes an excellent battery powered leaf blower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Autonomous driving is such a big opportunity, that trying to do it wihtout LIDARs is a giant premature optimization.

Just like trying to make fully automated assembly plants.

Whatever edge it may give on sensor cost savings in the long run, it has a steep penalty in time to market.

Even if eventually they make it without LIDARs, guess what? The competitors with successful fleets won't be too far behind.

<comment><USER10> If lidar was available for a few thousand, I think they would have used it. But it was much much more expensive in 2012 when I got my first one. Now they are kind of committed because they promised it would work for the generation 2.5 hardware in the model 3. So if they can't make it work, they'd have to refund 5k for a lot of sellers, or pay for upgrading to new hardware. I have gen 2 hardware, but I kind of doubt that it will be enough for autodriving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "When many car company people look at a Tesla, they see a not-great car with some cool features that they're going to build too, being produced at a small fraction of the volumes they're selling. "Look at the fit and finish, and the panel gaps, and the tent!" "

Is this the basis of the article?

The earliest Tesla car is rodster right? THAT IS A GREAT CAR in every aspect, right?...

<comment><USER36> The earliest Tesla was a Lotus Elise with an electric motor and batteries installed by Tesla

<comment><USER10> But I think a lot of people are stuck on that earlier car and don't get the engineering capability that Tesla has built over time.</comment></comment></comment>


Using "=" in email addresses for titles, roles and functions. - <AUTHOR> http://vulpeculox.net/ob/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Direct link: <http://vulpeculox.net/ob/EmailTitles.htm>

(otherwise you have to clikc on the nav bar to the left. frames - ugh)

<comment><USER3> It's as though the man designed his site deliberately to piss me off. Frames are one thing: I can excuse sticking with an old design, as irritating as it may be. No, what gets me is the fact that on the left column, at the bottom, is the text:

"Contact Please use contact details in each page"

Okay, so I click on the top article.

"Contact details are in the article" appears at the bottom.

No email address on that page that seems to be his. I try the next, and the next. Same thing. I hit Ctrl-U so I can see if there's some javascript bot- catching thing that's hidden it from me, too.

Except it's a frame site, so I can't see the source.

Fuck this.</comment></comment>


Why my startup failed - <AUTHOR> http://jamesmaskell.co.uk/2013/why-vinetrade-failed/ <comment><USER3> This is a truly wonderful writeup. I especially appreciated the insight that "Marketplaces need a big disconnect between buyers and sellers".

I try to tell this to startups that try to add indoor location-based technology to businesses like Men's Warehouse. What they fail to understand is that those places run better because they are staffed by people who understand their customers. When someone drives into the parking lot of a Men's Warehouse, they are already there to buy a suit. They don't need discounts or information about the products from an app on their smartphone, they need real customer service.

A skilled salesperson can upgrade anyone on warranties and other items. Having a piece of software do it, especially one built by a group of programmers and marketers that know nothing about suits, is ridiculous, and so is the idea of training skilled salespeople to also be system administrators for software that's not needed.

<comment><USER4> One thing that a lot of tech people forget (including, frequently, myself) is that there are reasons systems are the way they are. It might be inefficient, it might be stupid, it might waste everyone's time, but if they wanted to change things, they'd already be looking for a solutions. That they aren't is evidence that they don't see it as a problem.

<comment><USER5> This is a good point. There are two types of people in the world: thos that say "this is stupid" and those that say "oh, I get it".

<comment><USER6> Of course, only the first type ever changes the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading this post I can't help but think that if they had built services that the middlemen needed that they would have succeeded. For example, take the following two quotes:

"We wanted to revolutionise the fine wine industry, a market with many layers of middle men, and one that has traditionally eschewed technology, failing to patch it's many inefficiencies."

"Unfortunately, the service offered by all of these warehouses is poor. Again, we see little technology (basic online systems, preset passwords, refusal to spend money on an SSL certificate), and lots of human errors (such as very expensive wine being moved to the wrong accounts)."

If these statements are true then there are very real pain points here. Selling services to these vendors, solving their pains, is likely where there is money to be made.

<comment><AUTHOR> We tried this. The middle men simply weren't willing to pay for software (or at least enough to build a viable business).

It's a very antiquated market - with a lot of independent traders. Their view on software (particularly web based) is often that it's something you can get a teenager to build on the cheap and isn't worth spending real, hard cash on.

<comment><USER8> well then, it should be a simple matter to WalMart them out of business.

<comment><USER9> You are missing the point. Being Italian I know exactly what problems OP is facing because are problems that almost any Italian sector has. People do not want to move on.

Coming to the specific problem OP has. The wanted to work on fine wines, not WalMart wines. If the best wine in the world, would be sold at WalMart(or any other super market) even at the same price and in the same conditions it would lose immediately value because all the research, experimentation, and everything is lost, and that is a huge part of the experience that you taste with the wine.

A practical example: you know how to make the best cake in the world, but it takes a lot of time and it's hard so you can do it only once a year, but you love it, it's your favourite cake so when you make and eat it you love it and you wish you could do more. If WalMart started to sell the same cake you would buy it once or twice but it would not be the same and you probably would end doing once a year as you always did. This is the same problem of OP, people wanted the service, used once or twice and then went back to the old habits.

<comment><USER10> I think it's an important insight that certain inefficiencies can be tied to livelihood of the customer (wine sellers) and even the end user (wine buyers). There are strong emotional attachments to the PROCESS of making wine, promoting wine and selling wine. If you go to wineries throughout Sonoma county, you can clearly see that small, independent wineries often take pride in doing everything by hand and controlling their own selling to restaurants etc.

It is very similar to bookstores and record stores. Yes, there are big players that are handling there own optimizations but if you are a small winery (or bookstore/record store) you are doing it at this point in part as a preservation of an artisanal experience. There are countless ways they can do things better but there is a genuine fear that "optimizations" can be a slippery slope to Walmart-ville, both in how they think and how they are perceived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this. You clearly understand well what your core challenges were.

The interesting part is that you probably knew all of this going in. Perhaps you were so enamored with your idea, that you wanted to believe these were not the insurmountable challenges that they were. Reminds me of couples who marry knowing of certain glaring problems, but proceed anyway because they are "in love". Whether they downplay the problems, convince themselves they can overcome them or otherwise, these are frequently the very problems that lead them to failure (divorce).

But, more frequently, we probably just think these challenges will melt away or work themselves out somehow. Maybe that's why these businesses always look so good going in!

This is not to lambast you--quite the opposite actually. I have been there and I am still susceptible. I applaud you for acknowledging your challenges and getting out relatively early.

Good luck to you on your next venture!

<comment><AUTHOR> We knew exactly what the problems were - we just had a vision for how to overcome them and how things could be different. Every business starts as an idea, with a set of hypothesis to validate (even if you don't realise this at the time).

It was tough to decide to stop - but when you take a step back, look at the data we had, it was the right decision.

<comment><USER11> That's absolutely true. I think it's _very_ common in the startup world to tackle fairly big problems with known challenges--armed with a set of hypotheses--only to be later stopped out by those same challenges.

But, how much confidence in our hypotheses is enough when it comes to the key "show-stopper" challenges? How clear should we be on the path before moving forward? Speaking from personal experience and observation of others, I would say that we founders tend to be optimistic when assessing these challenges at times. There's a little hope in there.

I suppose a certain degree of that optimism is necessary, else no one would move forward. It's just a bit painful to fail for all of the reasons you knew beforehand.

Because, testing the proposed solutions can be exceedingly difficult and resource-intensive. I've often wondered if there's a better way to test assumptions than just going all-in. I've found the much-lauded MVP approach to solving this doesn't cut it for me or for a lot of models/founders. For models that require things like network effects, brand credibility, and more advanced functionality to even be usable the "MVP" is, effectively, the full product. And, this doesn't even consider the marketing/PR/etc. that must be put behind it.

Given all of that, you actually did well to move on in only 18 months. Congrats on making a tough choice and freeing yourself up for the next opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The statement about wine buying being part of the fun is the crux of the issue. I'm not into wine but I am into whiskey, and rather than buy from an online merchant, I much prefer walking into the local shop and getting a recommendation. That process is extremely enjoyable, and one I happily pay a bit more for. Same with craft beers. There are some really great high end sites that cater to luxury goods which are great examples of providing this experience online, but they require a lot of time and design experience, and are about as far from a marketplace as possible, conceptually.

<comment><USER13> With 'recommendation' you mean tasting? Otherwise i don't see a necessity for a physical process.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at. Sometimes it involves tasting, but not normally.

<comment><USER14> In particular, I enjoy getting to know the people who work at a local establishment and understand their taste. For instance, when it came to fine teas, I got to know one tea merchant well enough that she'd say, "This new green came in and I hated it! I thought you'd love it!" because we had entirely opposite tastes when it came to the astringent characteristics of tea. (Think a Pi Lo Chun versus a Sencha, for instance.)

While we are getting better at recommendations, the best salespeople still have a better understanding of what makes you like a product than "people like you also purchased..." algorithms. This may be particularly important in markets that are about different things for different consumers: wine selection may be about taste, or it may be about social signaling. Same is true in the transaction: it may be about the best price, building a relationship, having a relaxing escape (buying cigars, for instance), or any number of other things.

<comment><USER15> Even when salespeople _don't_ have a better understanding of your tastes they're more likely to be persuasive and more likely to add the perceived value to it... a salesperson who admits to hating something she recommends is a more memorable and compelling call to action than an algorithm

I'm sure Amazon's algorithms often do have a better idea of what I'd enjoy than many of my friends, but friends' recommendations are still more likely to induce me to act than a personalised promo email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, this is a very interesting writeup

"Unfortunately, over time we found that while people used the site once or twice, they quickly reverted back to emails and phone calls. We always knew that people bought this wine for fun."

Do you know why is that? It's not only about 'fun'. It's about knowing about the wine.

For the technically minded people it is easy to assume this 'wine talk' is BS (I'm not saying there isn't BS) but most of it isn't.

So the experience of buying it with someone who understands it is superior to seeing lists of pictures, prices and generic descriptions.

Also, I bet most wine consumers that would go for this service don't care to learn an iPhone app.

1st lesson for startups: Know your market! I can't make a "disruptive marketplace removing inefficiencies" for selling sand at a beach (absurd example, but you get the spirit)

How is it done today? Remove the pains, but don't take the good things out.

Another analogy. People won't exchange eating pineapples for bananas because bananas are easier to eat, rather, remove the pain of peeling the pineapple, but sell pineapple.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is one of the most interesting "Why my startup failed" type post I've ever read. You brought up real insights and didn't fall into the "I'm just gonna generically rehash 4 Steps to Epiphany and Lean Startup to look smart" trap. Thank you for taking the time to write it up, really excellent read.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm sorry to hear about the closing of your start-up, but your write-up really shows how much you have come to understand the business of solving peoples' problems. You aren't in denial about how the start-up failed and it is very refreshing to see!

In my opinion, you are poised for incredible success in your next start-up, because of what you learned at Vinetrade.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope so. I can definitely understand why investors prefer second or third time entrepreneurs so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _people were often happy to spend £5,000 on a case of wine, but not £10/year > for proper storage_

Irrational stuff like this really pains me, especially when it's part of the reason I'm failing. But people are the way they are, for better or for worse. You have to find a way around it.

<comment><USER20> Include 10 years free storage and charge £5,100? :)

<comment><USER17> Not sure if you were serious or not, but assuming you were, this type of "promotion" just doesn't fly for high-end goods such as fine wine.

<comment><USER21> I think the exact opposite may eventually work. Offer some storage for £250 (or even £500) per year, along with a convincing narrative about how much wine deteriorates if not stored properly, and why your storage is better than anything else. It's somewhat plausible that storing expensive wine must be expensive. But £10 per year? Meh, someone who is really into wine has his own cellar which costs way more than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You should take your technology and apply it to the nursing industry. I've been saying it for years: Healthcare is an inefficient marketplace. Hospitals always have a hard time filling nursing demand, so they go to extraordinary lengths. For instance, we currently live in Portland, OR rent free while my wife makes more than she would if she lived here, all because they don't have enough nurses. My wife has a recruiter, who sends her loads of paperwork.

There's totally a startup that could make a lot of money. Maybe start out as software for recruiters to manage their "inventory" of nurses? Then expand into a full on marketplace, eventually disinter-mediating said agencies.

<comment><USER23> I would like to hear more about taking advantage of the "Hospitals always have a hard time filling nursing demand"

My wife is a nurse and we are moving to a new city soon. Seems like a good time to optimize her employment if we can.

With free rent it sounds like she is part of a travel nursing program or something like that?

<comment><USER22> Yeah, Traci is a travel nurse. She's also done "registry" nursing, which is like local agency nursing on a shorter term basis. When she was a registry nurse, she would work at different hospitals, once or twice a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And last, but not least - wine market is a bubble itself. As one of my friends, very high profile sommelier, tells me every time - never pay more that 7 euros for a bottle, everything more expensive is a fluff.

<comment><USER25> _And last, but not least - wine market is a bubble itself._

Wow, just did a very quick Google, and some graphs look incredibly scary:

<http://www.bbr.com/fine-wine/investment-wine-prices>

[http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2012/07/09/investor...](http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2012/07/09/investors- hungover-after-wine-binge/)

[http://bordeaux-traders.com/wine-investment/stock- performanc...](http://bordeaux-traders.com/wine-investment/stock-performance/)

I admit that I know next to nothing about wine as an investment. Are the above a fair representation of the market over the last few years?

If so, I start to understand why I'd been hearing so many people talking about wine investments.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a huge bubble, that popped. Our timing was off completely (a lot of our target sellers want to sit on their stock until prices go back up), but the other problems we faced (outlined in the post) were greater.

As for wine prices - they're starting to creep back up again. It's an interesting commodity - a finite amount is produced each year. It tends to improve with age, while supply decreases and demand increases.

Prices increased so much (more than the normal 10-15% per year) because newly minted Chinese people got a taste for it and bought everything they could get their hands on.

<comment><USER26> The Chinese have very few domestic investment option, so they invest like crazy in things like this, not really because they like or care about wine. They were responsible for the last wine bubble and will be responsible for the next.

For me, the cheap Xinjiang wine is good enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> They were buying a lot for consumption too. Drinking (or gifting) a bottle of Lafite or Petrus is a good way to show how wealthy you are.

<comment><USER26> Ya, but most couldn't tell the cheap stuff from the expensive stuff, wine scams are common here even at the most reputable high end establishment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure if this was similar to your business model, but there is a site called cinderellawine.com that does daily deals for wines and does pretty well. I had a co-worker that was addicted to it, I don't think he even drank the wine. It does show that there is a market for "mail-order" wine that isn't based on personal connections.

</comment><comment><USER28> My impression of the wine biz is that supply is fragmented. In which case the network of relationships is complex (many-to-many) and so costly to maintain. In my business (insurance) disintermediation only followed massive consolidation on the insurer side. Many-to-many became Many-to-few. Cheaper to maintain, easier to scale.

</comment><comment><USER29> Interesting writeup James, thanks for sharing. The point about talking to salespeople being "part of the fun" is interesting - it's counter-intuitive to my engineer's mind, but I can see how the sales process is actually part of the value they are paying for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. It's an interesting lesson for tech focused people.

I think you can get around this by introducing social or gaming elements to the product. We didn't have the resources or the time to try that (and the size of the opportunity/market didn't justify the investment required).

<comment><USER29> Social, perhaps. Showing off your collection could be a motivating factor. But gamification I'm not so sure about. IMHO the typical wine collector will not be impressed by a "bought 10 bottles" badge, or something along those lines. Keep in mind I know nothing about the wine industry though, maybe the big collectors are all big kids at heart!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In hindsight, I suppose it's not surprising that an industry that prefers expensive, unreliable corks over cheap, reliable screw tops might eschew technology. If only it were that easy to figure out ahead of time.

<comment><USER31> OTOH that's also a data issue: some of the top quality US and even French producers are trying the Stelvin and other new tech closures, but it'll take 30-40 years to know if they're as good as the cork (but without the 10% spoiling problem). They hope so. Prmeability, reduction and all sorts of complex chemical issues are on the line, and it's not a linear, rctuangular, clockwork modernist problem!

And.. it's again a customer-driven thing. People like the ritual of a cork. It's soft data, but oh so important. Take a long time for people's expectations and preferences to change as many blind-utopian technologists find to their cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmmm... interesting to read [http://jamesmaskell.co.uk/2012/inspiration_for_startup_found...](http://jamesmaskell.co.uk/2012/inspiration_for_startup_founders/) now...

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if the customer in this case (the wine-buyer) is misunderstood. Not only does he go in for the relationship, but I suspect he wants to be able to show off the wine and tell stories about it to his friends/guests/people he's trying to impress. Buying a case of wine with a fantastic story may justify the premium, as opposed to a case of wine ordered directly from the vendor that comes unceremoniously in a fedex case.

</comment><comment><USER34> > The market is valued around $5-6bn per year, with around $1.5-2bn based in > the UK.

Does the UK really make-up a third of the world wine market, or did I misunderstand?

<comment><USER35> I think this is just the market for $300-$5000+ bottles of wine.

<comment><USER34> Still a decent effort :-)

I wonder if it's something to do with UK companies importing/exporting between the US and Europa

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fine wine (£100 per bottle and up). Of which about 80% is Bordeaux.

I calculated those figures by looking at widely used market stats, and then the turnover of the UK's fine wine wholesalers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is this largely an illustration of the value of domain knowledge? And I mean as an industry insider, not just a consumer. You don't even know what you don't know when you enter a new world.

I bet having someone on the team that had spent a couple years in the fine wine industry would have made a huge difference, though perhaps that difference would have been to discourage the entire endeavor.

<comment><AUTHOR> We did. I had a year of experience (on the operations side), our sales guy had several years of experience.

Many people in the industry were surprised when we closed - they fully expected us to do well. There are a lot of buyers who are very price sensitive (and happy to do things themselves / hunt around for bargains) - they assumed we'd scoop them all up in time.

<comment><USER36> Interesting. Thank you. I stand informed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why do you think people resorted back to phone orders, etc? Did you have some type of recommendation component for users?

For example, when someone places a phone order (especially for wine), they may ask the associates preference or suggestions. It would be awesome if you had a program that took drinkers preferences into consideration and then suggested maybe 3-5 wines.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was expecting this to be yet another navel-gazing exercise, and was pleasantly surprised by how informative and upbeat it was.

<comment><USER31> Quite! Also interesting is that you came even though you were expecting navel- gazing, so you must find value even in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Marketplaces need a big disconnect between buyers and sellers".

This is an interesting statement. I'm not sure I quite understand it though. Can you elaborate further?

It seems to me that you are saying that if buyer and seller know each other then they would eschew the market for a more intimate trading arrangement.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      It seems to me that you are saying that if buyer and seller know each other then they would eschew the market for a more intimate trading arrangement.

This is exactly what I'm saying. E.g. Airbnb wouldn't work if hosts and guests already knew or could easily find each other some other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Good article. I enjoyed from start to the end. I wish you the best luck on new ventures, as I stated on Twitter. I'm doing something right now wich has similar things (not wine) and it was good to read what happens and all the things that are in the game.

</comment><comment><USER41> So you are saying that your start-up failed and you are not whining any-more? ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> > Consumers had been crying out for this, claiming that they no longer wanted > to speak to a real person or pay the premium for doing so.

Was that only an assumption?

<comment><USER43> From reading the post, it sounds to me as if people trading wine weren't necessarily crying out for an automatic process, but were in fact looking to cut out the middleman.

But because the market was so insular, once you cut out the middleman it turned out you probably knew the person you were buying from anyway, at which point you became far more willing to engage with them directly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consumers/collectors wanted a better deal (they were paying minimum 10-20% to middle men when buying and selling).

We did a lot of customer development work (and were customers ourselves) to validate these issues. The problem was keeping people on the site - <USER2> reverted to email and phone once the novelty of doing it online had worn off.

<comment><USER44> Fine wine "connoisseurs" are rarely honest with themselves, much less with each other. They pretend to be able to discern qualities that they can't. Their whole hobby is a bit of a farce.

Wine Connoisseurs don't WANT TO BUY LESS EXPENSIVE WINE. They don't even want to buy fine wine vintages for cheap prices. To do so would cheapen the fashion that is fine wine purchasing. Sure, they'd like to be able to say they got a "good deal" from a reputable distributor, but that only goes so far.

It would be like buying your Prada products at Walmart. If Prada were to sell through Walmart, it would destroy the brand and the appeal for the people looking to purchase it.

<comment><USER45> I'm guessing that reputable dealers don't even give 'good deals' (i.e. discounts), but rather provide VIP clients access to their secret stash of exotica.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Excellent write up and thoroughly honest. Great insights.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not every problem "needs" a solution, or wants one for that matter. Good market research can help avoid these types of situations.

<comment><USER48> Sometimes the only way to prove a solution won't work is to create it and find out. Even then, you don't know that it won't work for someone else in the future.

Do your market research but disruptive innovation isn't something which can be formulated. Else we'd be much better at it by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> " Another round, and more time, was possible, but it wouldn't have been right to take more money for something that I no longer believed would work."

While I understand the sentiment, and I don't suspect it was done lightly, the rationale here is superficial. "I no longer believed would work". Well, whether it would work or wouldn't at one point you believed, and now you've got a team of people working for you. Closing primarily on the basis of your beliefs (which, apparently, were faulty before - perhaps they're faulty now too? market might turn around? network connections might kick in in 6-12 months?) comes across as selfish.

I don't think you actually _were_ or _are_ \- I've no doubt there was a lot more going on that you didn't summarize in this one blog post, and it came across a bit off-handed. I say this as someone who's had to close down something with a team of people - I don't think anyone ever takes this decision lightly.

<comment><USER50> This doesn't make sense as a critique. There is no other way for a person to make a decision to continue to do something than to base it on their belief in its possible success. The frailty of these beliefs as proven by past failures in judgement is irrelevant. Imagine the absurdity of the situation:

VC: So how do you feel about this company going forward once we give you another round of capital?

Owner: I believe we will fail. I am going to take your money and continue anyway.

If the VC did not interpret the owner as being irrational, he would be suspect himself. You are suggesting that it is selfish to give up things you believe are doomed. What other criteria is there for giving something up?

<comment><USER49> VC: So how do you feel about this company going forward once we give you another round of capital?

Owner: I believe this is a lot harder than I originally anticipated, and have learned a lot about the industry that invalidates some of the original assumptions. Continuing down the same road isn't a good option, but I'm thinking there are some other opportunities that we've identified which would be more profitable to pursue. Given that you have paid for this education and research, would you be interested in continuing to support us during a change in direction?

<comment><USER50> Now you are arguing that OP should have pivoted to something new under the assumption that he had an idea of how to so pivot. That's fine, but it is not a defense of the point you originally made and instead agrees with my counterargument.

<comment><USER49> I was suggesting that there was probably more going on that wasn't divulged in the piece, but the phrasing of "i shut this down because I didn't believe it in" does come across as somewhat selfish. There were/are other people involved - perhaps they were consulted, but the post doesn't mention that they were consulted. Letting the rest of the team go on with someone else at the helm, perhaps with the funders selecting someone new to run things, would have been an option any more. But "I don't believe in this anymore" = shutting down something which some other people may have put their lives in - comes across as selfish.

Again... there's probably more going on that wasn't posted - I was reacting to what was posted, and trying to suggest there may be better ways to phrase what was said.

<comment><USER51> "I don't believe in this anymore" = shutting down something _is exactly the right thing to do_

The funding you get from VCs comes from Grandma's pension fund.

You think it's better to burn millions from the pensions of Grandma and her friends to sink into a losing business?

Just to keep a few of us engineers employed for another year before the inevitable failure?

Screw the engineers.

And let them look for better, non-dead-end jobs _earlier_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Prepares Online Advertising Program - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/amazon-preps-a-challenge-to-googles-ad-business-1408747979-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMjEyNDIyWj <comment><USER2> This is potentially a real risk to Google. The odds of such a huge success it decreases Google's profits are tiny (I think). But there is a real risk that the increase in Google's profits going forward are materially affected by a well done competitor to Adsense.

If Amazon took away 10% of what Google's adsense business 4 years from now would have been that is likely material to Google's earning. Not huge but real.

Even losing the ads on Amazon's web site is likely noticeable (though not a huge deal I would guess).

There is even the potential Google has to reduce their profitability to compete - giving web sites a better cut of revenue.

That said I think Amazon has plenty of challenges to making it an effective competitor to Google. But they have a chance. And there is even a small chance (very small I think) that Amazon could create a competitor that actually results in noticeably (say over 15%) declining revenue to Google via adsense. Likely even in this case Google continues to grow profit.

Google revenue from ads from their own websites are the most important earnings and likely to continue to be so. Also new business (non web-ad- income) is growing and I think will continue to do so (this is likely an area some might find more questionable).

</comment><comment><USER3> Well Google still has the dominant search traffic and that's where the text ads with real intent behind them get shown and clicked on so this isn't going to do much.

And as far as people doing product searches on Amazon.com, it's not a great source of revenue for advertisers. If you want to get _real_ sales from Amazon customer searches you need to have your products for sale either via Amazon itself or in the Amazon marketplace. They make way more money that way and place the way they place ads on their pages reflect that.

Google will retain total dominance in this area as long as a the vast majority of people use google.com for web searches.

<comment><USER4> That may be so. But there also may be an opportunity for Amazon to target ads better than anyone else could. Essentially retargeting for Amazon's platform.

<comment><USER3> Amazon can re-target better than Google because they know about some products you browsed on Amazon.com? Google has your entire search history, click through history, ad-interaction history and a ton of other data to target you.

<comment><USER5> Not browsed. Bought.

Maybe even more importantly, they know which products you returned and why. Public reviews on items are one thing and likely gameable, the direct merchant feedback form remains private between the merchant and the customer. And Amazon, of course, because they mediate the exchange.

For pure marketing purposes that kind of limited view could be quite valuable indeed.

As to what this means for me? More rules in AdBlock, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From what I understand, they are pitching an agency model. The rate I heard quoted was $2.50 CPM.</comment>