Japanese Change Trays - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/23/reference/change-trays/#.VW8ybJ-po0t <comment><USER2> They are also in use in Germany and it never occurred to me that they may not be used all over the world. They are called [Zahl|Wechselgeld][teller|schale] [1] which translates to [paying|change] [plate|bowl]. They can not be found in every shop but probably in the majority. Some people use them, some don't. And it is more common to present the change in them than the payment. The obvious purpose is of course to easily be able to see that the amount is correct while avoiding escaping coins. They also often show ads, nowadays on displays. And nobody moves them around in Germany, they just sit on top of the counter.

[1] [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahlteller](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahlteller)

<comment><USER3> I live in the Netherlands, only a few kilometers from Germany, but I've never seen any. Is it everywhere in Germany, or only certain regions?

The only similar thing I've ever seen is at things like amusement parks or where ferry tickets are sold: the cashier is behind glass and talks to you through a microphone (and you to them). Exchange of tickets and money goes through a rotating tray sort of thing that is below the glass and is moved by the person behind the glass. I find it very impersonal and not a nice way of doing business. Surely we can talk like normal human beings?

Of course that is different from change trays, there is no glass or microphones involved there, but it's the closest thing I can think of.

As an aside, I can see why it might be more common in Germany than in the Netherlands: you guys pay almost always by cash (taking forever when the cashier goes "do you perhaps have 23 cents with that?" to make the change round) whereas here bank card, and especially the quick wireless option is more and more prevalent.

<comment><USER2> I think it is not a local thing but I never really paid attention. Try gas stations or small lottery or tobacco stores, they tend to have the ones with displays showing the jackpot sum or cigarette ads. On the other hand you usually won't see them say in super markets with cash registers with conveyor belts. But even there is, at least sometimes, a small pit build right into one of the surfaces. Solutions similar to the one in the amusement park are also used at gas stations during the night hours, mainly at gas stations with low customer frequency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pro tip: if you want to review the correct pronunciation of the word "gai- jin," skip the tray and hand your cash directly to the clerk.

<comment><USER5> They may call you gaijin, but you get perks for being one. I look completely like Japanese (well, I was born there; but I lived in the States long enough, and I am gaijin by my definition, but it's not by theirs) -- so when I travel to Japan, I'd naturally hand money to clerk, either he/she would either give me this funny looks, or told politely (occasionally frustrated) to place that money on the tray.

So sometimes I get the worst of the both status there...

<comment><USER6> I knew of a couple that went to Japan where the gaijin (her white husband) spoke more Japanese than she did (100% Japanese Canadian). It apparently confused quite a number of people, because they all expect her to start speaking Japanese.

<comment><USER7> I've experienced the opposite -- if I go to Europe, I look like everyone else, and the most likely outcome when they discover that I don't speak their language is irritation.

Whenever I go to Asia, I'm treated like a novelty if I speak even a few words.

<comment><USER5> The way I feel it works is, if their perception is that you are not one of them you basically get extra credit for that, but if they don't see you that way, then you basically get your points deducted for each of "mistakes" you make.

This really hurts me sometimes, because I know this and put so much effort try to fit in, but I basically get no praise for that, instead, I get nitpicked for noncompliances.

In a case of some individuals like hotel clerks, that I actually spent some time talking, seeing multiple times a day, they totally understand my situation and didn't give me hard time. (And it was tiny hotel, that didn't really caters to foreigner, so it not that the they were used to it -- funny side story is a few year after that -- perhaps when their son took over the business, they've completely changed to cater to foreigners instead :-) )

<comment><USER7> Yep. And this has a downside -- expats in Asia tend to complain about "never fitting in" \-- but it comes with a bonus dose of forgiveness for all sorts of social problems that the locals have to worry about.

But it's also true that people in the service industry are gruff no matter where you go. It's hard to be pre-school-polite to hundreds of illiterate adults a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lived in Japan for 8 years and have worked part time in cafes .. The training I got was to leave the money in the tray until you confer the change to the customer. It prevents things like "hang on! I gave you 5000 not 1000!" \- the money paid stays in plain sight until the transaction is complete. Shop staff almost never put the money away before you get your change.

<comment><USER9> I always assumed this was the main reason the trays are used. This, and the fact that either party can easily tip the tray into their hand to gather change, rather than picking up coins one by one or scooping them off the edge of the table.

Whenever Japan comes up people assume some matter of politeness is involved, but a lot of times the explanation is much simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a much older custom that seems so similar it is hard to imagine that it is not related. When passing an item to someone - say a cup to a house guest - one is traditionally never supposed to hand the item directly to the other person - i.e. never directly from hand to hand. Typically this meant placing the item on a tray (お盆) and offering the item on the tray to the person (or at least placing the item in front of the person for them to pick up). You can see examples of this today in, for example, formal Shinto ceremonies a ceremonial square tray is often used (折敷) or frankly at any fancy kaiseki restaurant.

I'm not sure about the origin of the custom, but perhaps the action of taking something out of someone's hand feels too close to taking it forcefully from them - i.e. for the same reason it is considered impolite for two people to hold the same piece of food by chopstick (for example, if passing food between people from chopstick to chopstick).

<comment><USER11> > I'm not sure about the origin of the custom, but perhaps the action of > taking something out of someone's hand feels too close to taking it > forcefully from them - i.e. for the same reason it is considered impolite > for two people to hold the same piece of food by chopstick (for example, if > passing food between people from chopstick to chopstick).

Isn't the chopstick thing related to funeral rituals?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral)

> The relatives pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn > using large chopsticks or metal picks, two relatives sometimes holding the > same bone at the same time with their chopsticks (or, according to some > sources, passing the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks). Known as kotsuage > (骨揚げ?), this is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to > hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. At all other times, > holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing > an item from chopsticks to chopsticks, will remind all bystanders of the > funeral of a close relative and is considered to be a major social faux pas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Think about the protocol in CS terms...

Hand to hand western style is 1:1 blocking I/O, both the payer and recipient must be simultaneously active at the same moment.

At a restaurant/bar this tray is the worlds smallest FIFO and you put a packet into the packet buffer at your convenience and the service worker clears the buffer at their convenience, and this protocol is considered so polite that even at convenience stores when you're in a line you still use the FIFO buffer and pretend you're both not in a hurry and have plenty of time for proper, measured, unhurried service, even when you don't actually have the time. Its impolite to force a two concurrent processes to deadlock waiting a simple packet buffer transfer, and even if they do, they like to pretend its not happening.

If the trays looked nicer it would have been an obvious conspicuous consumption opportunity. The cheap store has injection molded plastic; we have marble trays; they have antique engraved ebony.

I wonder how or if they handle what CS would call transaction locks, to make sure the other process doesn't grab the buffer to empty it while the filler is still shoveling in small change. Not having been to Japan yet, I'm guessing the tray moves and at least subtly you somehow indicate you're done filling the bucket before the service worker starts emptying it.

I had another model based on traditional innumeracy, if traditionally payers were innumerate you shovel coins onto the bucket until the service worker sees enough and takes away the bucket. I find this model theoretically possible to implement although highly unlikely in practice.

<comment><USER13> Eh, that's a stretch. You can call the tray asynchronous if you want, but you still have to wait for it to return.

<comment><USER12> I love to stretch... good for the brain. Its a concurrency design pattern, never, never ever, create an opportunity for complicated deadlocks at the protocol or implementation layer when you can just toss down a boring simple well understood and easy to debug FIFO/buffer. There are times and places where complication is needed in programming, but paying your sushi bill isn't it. Or the meta design pattern of always make it as simple as possible and not a bit too simple.

Even if this is total space cadet time, I like thinking about concurrency issues. (edited to fix horrible phrasing: I like to look at Japanese currency trays thru concurrency tinted sunglasses, just because its fun, even if the Japanese themselves don't like those sunglasses, also its funny to talk about currency and concurrency at the same time)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Question: Is money considered "dirty" in Japan?

In North America, women keep bills and coins in their purses next to used tissues, and studies have shown that men's wallets have an even higher concentration of bacteria than women's purses. We sit on and, on hot days, sweat on our money all day. Let's face it, the stuff is pretty disgusting. However, if somebody hands you a twenty, your first reaction is usually not, "Oh gross, now I need to wash my hands".

In terms of hygiene, it makes sense for waiters to collect currency on trays so they don't have to wash their hands after every bill is settled (assuming it's a different person's job to take the cash off the tray and put it in the till). Could this be the reason the practice started? The connection between disease and microbes would have existed around the time these trays appeared, so it's possible a crusading doctor or someone similar convinced vendors to use these trays.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure. One thing I can say from experience though is that bills in Japan are newer and cleaner than they are in the US. My impression is that it would be unthinkable in Japan to write on a bill with a pen or to crumple it up. Also, I'd guess bills that start to get worn are taken out of circulation much earlier.

Compare that to the US where I've seen a supermarket teller draw a line with a pen across a bill after accepting it (why?) or people pulling wadded cash balls out of their pockets to pay for a soda at a convenience store.

I don't know what accounts for the difference but I did like the typically crisp and new bills in Japan.

<comment><USER16> To answer your question, it was likely a counterfeit detecting pen[0] that only leaves a visible mark on counterfeit notes. I generally only see them used on $100 bills; rarely on anything smaller.

[0]: [http://money.howstuffworks.com/question212.htm](http://money.howstuffworks.com/question212.htm)

<comment><USER15> Interesting! Thank you for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was with my friend at a bar in Osaka, and we'd had a few. The waiter came over and set down a circular change tray. I being a little intoxicated assumed he wanted me to use a coaster, so I picked up my glass and set it on it. He was not amused by this and shot me a VERY stern look - and then it clicked. We left soon after, quite embarrassed.

<comment><USER18> hah, no need to be embarrassed, that was probably the ONLY way you'd learn about the custom.

<comment><USER17> We'd been in Japan for almost a week at this point, so we'd seen it all over the place and knew full well about the practice. The tray was just usually a rectangle as is the one in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Restaurants in the US use small trays to confer bills and money all the time. What makes this Japan-specific?

<comment><USER20> These are used everywhere in Japan, not just restaurants. At a convenience store, department store, the museum, train station, etc.

I've never seen them outside of a restaurant in the states.

<comment><USER21> But what is the point of using a movable tray in a shop or museum and so on, where employee has a cash or cash machine right next to it? And if the tray is just a place to put cash before other person takes it - such trays are used everywhere in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Department stores in the U.S. (At least in Minneapolis) used to ferry payment via baskets on wires from the clerk up to an accounting room where the money was counted, change made, and delivered back to the customer via the same contraption.

<comment><USER23> Interesting, do you have a source so I could learn more?

<comment><USER24> Try the Cash Railway Website - [http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/index.htm](http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it possible that it could be related to change needing to be weighed to be determined legitimate, or simply as a way of measuring the amount? (like paying with gold dust in the Yukon or what have you)

Beyond that I can see it being a result of extreme cultural stratification, as the article touches on - that it would be seen as demeaning for a higher-class person to put money directly into the lower-class person's hand.

It's quite interesting that no one has any clear idea! I love little mysteries like this.

<comment><USER20> Weighed as in with a scale? Possibly historically this might have been a concern or a mechanism to check for counterfeits, but currently the change and bills are placed in the same, non-measured, tray. It's just a generic plastic tray, and it varies from shop to shop.

<comment><USER26> Customs have this odd thing about living on way beyond its practical use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Phillipe the Original in downtown Los Angeles has used these as long as I can remember. Phillipe is an old school sandwich place (they claim to have invented the "French dip"), not a Japanese establishment. I wonder now why they're using them: I had mistakenly assumed it was some pre-WWII Western custom that they kept alive for that authentic vintage feel.

<comment><USER28> if you watch closely (or really, at all...) the person serving you food doesn't touch the money. the tray is to take your payment and change between you and the central cashier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This makes me think I should pick one of these up for my daughter to carry around. She can't rotate her hands to a palm-up position, which causes no end of hassle and confusion when getting change from retail transactions.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wait, what countries don't use these? At least in Canada every restaurant that isn't fast-food is going to give you the receipt and change on a tray or in a leather booklet.

<comment><USER31> How about at the counter of a 7-11?

<comment><USER32> Funnily enough I was just at a 7-11 in Tokyo about 30 minutes ago, just as you were writing this comment, and before I had read this thread. I happened to notice that such a tray was not in use there, which felt more efficient. Of course 7-11 is mostly a franchise business, so it may the store owner's decision.

<comment><USER31> Which one? I think it is more likely you just missed it. I've never noticed a convenience store without one, though now I guess I will be looking out for it.

<comment><USER32> Just north from Suidobashi station, Mita line, North exit. The till nearest the door. It was a male Japanese cashier (unusual at that store) who seemed particularly dynamic. Possibly a management trainee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When I was in Japan, I would always put the money in the tray, but the cashier would always return directly to my hand. I didn't understand why.

<comment><USER32> When this has happened to me ( rarely ) I sometimes recall feeling a slight tickle. Such as a palm reader might use to promote trade.

<comment><USER34> I've found the cashiers will often stroke the bottom of your hand when placing change directly in your palm. Feels very reassuring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Instead of handing your payment to the clerk, or setting it on the counter by the cash register, here you are generally expected to put your payment into a tray that is presented expressly for the purpose. The clerk takes it away and returns it with your change."

Either I'm missing something from the context or author is mistaken. Trays and boxes in multiple forms and sizes are used everywhere in restaurants in Europe and ex-USSR countries. In banks and similar facilities people usually hand over cash via some special trays built in the counter because of the glass separating customer and clerk.

In fact I don't remember a single restaurant in 20 or so countries where I could go to the counter pay there directly or leave cash on the counter. In every case when I tried this (I wanted to speed up things) I was told to go and wait for the waiter, who will bring a tray where I will put cash or card (in cases when card terminal in not wireless).

<comment><USER35> I think you're confusing things a little: we're not talking about restaurants per se here.

I don't know whereabouts in Europe you are, but you have to imagine a store like H&M where you generally place goods on a countertop to purchase them. In Japan, those countertops usually have a nondescript tray also lying on them, and it is considered impolite to hand your payment directly to the cashier-- instead, while putting down all of your goods for purchase, you simultaneously put your payment into the tray.

There are of course restaurants where they'll hand you a bill and you bring it up to the counter -- at least in the US. For example, in the Kansas City, Missouri region you'll see this both in the sit-down tex-mex chain-restaurant El Maguey as well as smaller sit-down cafes (the one that's coming to mind is City Diner, which is by the River Market). But that's not quite what we're talking about here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "It's an interesting question," the curator I spoke to allowed

I wonder if non native English speakers find this expression (or the use of "allowed") confusing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Was just in Japan and encountered these everywhere. We knew to use them from our research prior to the trip. Initially I was under the impression it was to prevent the spread of germs, but that didn't really line up because the money comes into contact with the cashier's hand regardless if the tray is used or not. I guess it could help reduce the amount of small hand-to-hand contact that is sometimes experienced when you place money in someones hand directly.

It was easier for the cashier to glance at the amount we had placed in the tray and help us count out the correct amount of money for our first few days there while trying to get accustomed to the types of currency.

<comment><USER37> It also prevents coins being dropped while passed from hand to hand. In a county with coins up to about the $5 equivalent, that's pretty useful.

<comment><USER38> Just FYI there's been a huge devaluation of the yen/strengthening of the dollar. ¥500=$4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Currently travelling through Japan for the first time. They ask if you have now finished placing the cash that you wish to pay with. This means I have been able to put notes in the tray and then shuffle through my coins attempting to get rid of as many 5Y and 1Y coins as I can. Cash in such a modern technology forward country is still weird. I have already broken my wallet due to the over use of the coin pouch. Prior to coming here it had never been used. New Zealand, where I am from adopted Eftpos over 25 years ago. We are already chip and pin, and pay wave has found its way into most POS areas. Japan is behind here but in a way I find to be very enjoyable.

<comment><USER40> Any chance you will be in Sendai? Ill buy you a beer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The difference between the west and Japan in regard to change trays is that in the west (US, Canada, Europe, etc.) they're often available in a small subset of cash payment scenarios, but in Japan they're always available in every cash payment scenario. Not to mention that even when they are available in the west, they're rarely used, but in Japan they're always used. I've lived in the US, Spain, and Japan for considerable periods of time, and the level to which they're available and customarily used in Japan is what makes them such a noteworthy use case.

</comment><comment><USER42> In Japan, anytime you hand someone cash in personal life it's rude not to put it in an envelope. Examples includes gifts or paying your Japanese teacher.

The tray avoids passing cash hand to hand. 20 years ago, clerks (or taxi drivers) would be visibly surprised and slightly shocked if you tried to hand them cash. But that's relaxed a lot now. Tourists hand cash to clerks and the reaction is slight if at all. Taxi drivers often exchange cash hand to hand. It's still more polite to use the tray but less strict.

</comment><comment><USER43> In the bar I used to work in we used to give the change to customers on a tray to prompt the customer to give us a tip. So I always assume that's why they are being used.

<comment><USER44> Japan though, has almost no tipping culture.

<comment><USER45> But, every sushi bar has a tip jar? Or only in America

<comment><USER46> Tipping, in various situations, is definitely a cultural thing which easily changes - even from the US to Europe. Guidebooks almost universally will tell you about what is expected. Different places handle different situations differently as well, such as tipping in a restaurant, to a bellhop, or to a taxi.

Similarly bargaining is diverse as well. You may not think of it, but in the US you bargain back and forth for big ticket items (cars, houses) but not little things. In many east Asian countries it is the opposite, you bargain with street salesmen but not for a motorcycle or car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> These are common in Turkey and generally used in both sides of a transaction. I saw them in Syria as well (10 years ago). There, it seemed that part of the purpose was to mitigate "accidental" physical contact between men and women. Several women I knew there complained about guys getting fresh (touching their fingers or hands) during transactions. The tray prevented this. In Turkey though, I think it is more for transparency in the transaction.

</comment><comment><USER48> We have these in Canada, I'm pretty sure I've used these in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well, not sure where these aren't used actually.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, when I was a kid I remember them being pretty common in restaurant/diner type places. (I suppose more rural type places as well) Now that credit cards are a pretty prevalent payment method, and a lot of the older establishments have gone by the wayside, I don't see them as much. Interesting you should mention Pennsylvania, that's where I'm grew up. I wonder if they weren't as ubiquitous as I had assumed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _And as one shopkeeper explained it, offering change in a tray feels more polite than simply placing money in a customer's hand._

See also English Victorian change packets:

[http://boingboing.net/2012/04/30/victorian-change-packets- li...](http://boingboing.net/2012/04/30/victorian-change-packets-litt.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> come on, this is common in EU..Germany etc, too

<comment><USER52> Where have you seen this? I've lived in Berlin for six years and I have literally never encountered anything like it.

<comment><USER53> I've seen them everywhere I've visited in Germany. An image search came up with this¹, which says they're called "Zahlteller" (counting plates).

1: [http://www.schnitzelbahn.com/homepage/2010/11/25/the-evil- za...](http://www.schnitzelbahn.com/homepage/2010/11/25/the-evil- zahlteller.html) (scroll down a bit)

<comment><USER52> Oh ok. Yes, some places put your change in a tray (which I've seen in the US too), but you still hand money directly to them. It's really not the same thing that's discussed in the article.

<comment><USER51> right, I guess it's a bit more 'both ways' in Japan, maybe because of the aversion to phyiscal contact and love of politeness....but same thing basically. I recall seeing them in Berlin/DE most often at train station cafes/Bäckerei etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I remember these being common in Canada at least as late as the mid-1980s. Usually branded with a credit card logo.

<comment><USER55> I think I know what youre speaking of, my recollection growing up in the 90s was that the bill at a restaurant would always arrive on a tray, and then any change, mints, customer receipt, change would be returned on the same tray after payment was made.

Now with debit cards (interac, not mastercard) being the norm its standard to get the bill and then have them bring over a wireless debit machine (and has been that way for at least 10+ years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unrelated, but interesting custom: Koreans (possibly others of the Asian persuasion) generally will hand you change with both hands (possibly with a small bow), it's considered rude to hand cash with only one hand. No idea why.

</comment><comment><USER56> Genuinely curious now ... if the trays are meant to avoid hand contact, how do things work in drive-thrus there?

Fairly common to get some level of hand-contact there when passing around money, credit cards or food bags.

<comment><USER57> Hmm, good question. Part of the answer is that drive-thrus are very rare in Japan. But there's at least one MacDonald's in the city where I live that has a drive-thru, but I've never noticed what they do.

Pizza delivery guys will just pull out your change from a coin purse, though.

Edit: Just remembered that sometimes toll collectors on the highways use them, but not 100% of them, so there's that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> My favourite part of this article was the description of an entirely trust- based retail economy that has now - sadly but inevitably - vanished.

</comment><comment><USER59> I thought money trays were ubiquitous all over the world. Any examples where they are _not_ widely used?

<comment><USER60> not common in the UK</comment></comment>


Why you should learn just a little Awk - A Tutorial by Example - <AUTHOR> http://gregable.com/2010/09/why-you-should-know-just-little-awk.html# <comment><USER2> I used awk 20 years back. Then I moved on. My awk scripts still run, those in other languages don't (major version changes e.g.). Also, I began manipulating text using grep, cut, sed and sort, but found that these read through the file each time, becoming slow as data increases. Using awk you can search, filter and manipulate data in ONE iteration of the file making it very fast. And so i once again brushed up on awk.

btw, i suggest using _gawk_ since it has date functions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote an ebook 2 months ago on Awk called "Awk One-Liners Explained."

<http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-book/>

It teaches Awk through many practical examples, so called one-liners, that are small and short programs that just do one task. Such as joining lines, printing lines matching a pattern, summing up numbers on lines, converting text, etc.

Check it out!

<comment><USER2> If i recall, you also wrote a (wonderful) gawk script to download youtube videos (which I contributed some updates to). I still use it often (the famous python program link fails, btw). [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/downloading- youtube-videos-with...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/downloading-youtube- videos-with-gawk/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, yes I did! :)

It was more like proof of concept that GNU Awk is awesome and can do things like binary data IO and networking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would Awk be useful for end user plain text databases? I want to keep a listing of all my books but I would prefer not to use a database and to use something that works in the Unix console.

<comment><USER5> _The Awk Programming Language_ [1], by Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger, has a whole chapter on using Awk as a relational database engine. (They implement a small query language in Awk itself.) It's also a great book period.

[1] <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook>

<comment><USER6> I agree , great book. Have you checked the price lately?

<comment><USER5> Luckily, I don't need to: I picked it up from Amazon (university library sell- off) after silentbicycle recommended it here some time back.

(You made me curious: there are used copies at Amazon starting at around $6.00[1].)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/020107981X/ref=dp_olp...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/020107981X/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used)

<comment><USER3> I wrote an e-book on Awk two months ago:

<http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-book/>

It teaches Awk through many practical examples, so called one-liners, that are small and short programs that just do one task. Such as joining lines, printing lines matching a pattern, summing up numbers on lines, converting text, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (n/g)AWK doesn't just make sense for one-liners: it's a full (one could argue: the first) scripting language. Thinking it was only for one-liners put me off learning it at first. That was a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER8> An older discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2486231>

<comment><USER9> Ha! Thanks. I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out why I can't reply to that thread.

I had hopped from HN to Gregable, then followed the link on Gregable to the 2010 HN thread (thinking I had returned to the original).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you didn't already know that Ruby scripts can be written in a very similar way to awk, this makes for a good read.

<http://tomayko.com/writings/awkward-ruby>

</comment><comment><USER11>
      07.46.199.184 [28/Sep/2010:04:08:20] "GE...

07, huh? :)

</comment><comment> g-garron I use awk a lot, but only as canned solution I found on the web, your article definitely decided me to learn it. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738688>

</comment><comment><USER13> TO ALL THE NAYSAYERS REGARDING AWK'S POWER:

Q. Have you had any surprises in the way that AWK has developed over the years?

A. One Monday morning I walked into my office to find a person from the Bell Labs micro-electronics product division who had used AWK to create a multi- thousand-line computer-aided design system. I was just stunned. I thought that no one would ever write an AWK program with more than a handful of statements. But he had written a powerful CAD development system in AWK because he could do it so quickly and with such facility. My biggest surprise is that AWK has been used in many different applications that none of us had initially envisaged. But perhaps that's the sign of a good tool, as you use a screwdriver for many more things than turning screws.

\- from the 2008 Computerworld interview with Alfred V. Aho (<http://goo.gl/OVtFU>)

<comment><USER14> Serious question: What can you use a screwdriver for (besides turning a screw)?

<comment><USER15> chisel

hole punch

lever

prybar

stethoscope

electrical bus bar

electrical probe

paint stirrer

scraper

hammer

engraving tool

depth gauge

compass

And yes, I've used screwdrivers for all those purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well wrtten.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ahhhh, so _that's_ how I get a job at google.

</comment><comment><USER18> Let it go, it's 2011. Every time someone uses Awk in this day and age god kills a baby seal.

<comment><USER19> Care to elaborate? I'd love to hear alternatives you use for the same kind of task.

<comment><USER18> Mostly chains of sort, uniq, sed, tr, comm and friends.

Anything that doesn't fit into 80 chars that way is usually a sure sign that it's time to reach for a real scripting language rather than brewing up one of those line-noise blobs.

Oh, and of course I don't mind when people use it on their shell-prompt.

I do mind when I run into crap like this in a shell-script:

      awk -F'>' '{ pack[$1]=pack[$1] $2 } END {for (val in pack) print val ">", "(" pack[val] ")"}'

<comment><USER20> _a sure sign that it's time to reach for a real scripting language_

Awk is Turing-complete.

<comment><USER21> So is brainfuck, and whitespace. This isn't really a useful thing to point out.

For any sort of script thats going to be run many times and may need to be improved or extended, readability is a _huge_ plus.

<comment><USER22> Awk is incredibly readable in a shell script. It's a proper scripting language that actually looks cleaner than the Bourne shell.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DropList - Send your marketing campaigns 100x cheaper - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tusharsoni/droplist <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

Author here. I work on several projects that require me to stay in touch with the customers and keep them up-to-date on new initiatives that we are taking. I have tried several marketing platforms such as Mailchimp and Sendy. However, they can be really expensive or hard to maintain/set-up.

The goal with DropList is to have an open-source [1] marketing platform that can be easily self-hosted. But, we do provide a hosted version [2] for convenience at a very low cost. Over time, I want to add features for email automation, complex segmentation, and more.

If you have suggestions or any other feedback, please leave comments here.

[1] [https://github.com/tusharsoni/droplist](https://github.com/tusharsoni/droplist)

[2] [https://droplist.email](https://droplist.email)

</comment><comment><USER2> Congratulations on the launch, how does it differs from that of listmonk[1], it's open source and battle tested at Zerodha. Ability to create templates via a drag/drop tool would give marketers a lot less friction.

[1][https://github.com/knadh/listmonk](https://github.com/knadh/listmonk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! ListMonk looks great but I'm not sure what their future plans are so it would be hard to do a fair comparison. For DropList, the plan is to move towards email automation using drip campaigns.</comment></comment>


How to Install Wifi on a Boeing 737 - <AUTHOR> http://www.layovers.to/hub/2014/7/5/how-to-install-wifi-on-a-737 <comment><USER2> could that be any less informative?</comment>


We Struggle Understanding AI? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/why-we-struggle-understanding-ai-43fd8c761e94 <comment><USER2> To be honest, I think pop culture and doomsayers like Musk have been hyping up AI to be something it's not.

It's not actually "intelligent". It doesn't make decisions, it doesn't learn outside of its domain. It doesn't control things you don't give it access to. It's still a goddamn computer program!

People need to start worrying about the real implications of AI--mass surveillance, fraud generation, etc., not the Terminator or AI taking over the world. It's math, and math can be dangerous in the right hands; but it's those hands we should be worried about, not math itself!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i agree with you 100% - Musk is doing it for long time and it serves his purpose

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> always appreciate feedback</comment>


Yang calls on Amazon to admit job loss from automation - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/seattle-visit-presidential-candidate-andrew-yang-calls-amazon-admit-job-loss-automation/ <comment><USER2> Ask Ford/KUKA/FANUC/every other company as well. Just because something did analytics on worker schedules doesn't make it different than a poring HR rep with hidden black boxes.</comment>


First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hubspot.com/uattr/real-purpose-of-amazon-delivery-drones <comment><USER2> I am not a technology expert and I am not a marketing expert but, as a consumer, I have moved gradually over the years from using Amazon primarily for online book-buying to using it extensively for all kinds of retail buying needs. The Prime service has been central to that experience because human psychology appears to be perverse and something so small as "free" 2-day shipping, though not really free, seems to have given me ample incentive to buy from Amazon when I could just as easily have bought from someone else. I am not sure why exactly. It just proved the path of least resistance. Being fast, efficient, and reliable, it worked and makes me a reflexive Amazon customer. I buy books, DVDs, select grocery items, and quite an array of other things from Amazon that I could just as easily be buying from others and "free" delivery via Prime has been a major factor in shaping that habit for good or for bad as concerns whatever my true self interests may be in the buying choices. What is more, as video streaming has begun to supplant things such as DVDs, I have moved somewhat zombie-like into Amazon's Prime streaming service for the reason, among others, that I have developed my reflexive relationship with the company and have found it easy to try their other offerings before I will move to offerings of other vendors. Again, this has all been bundled with Amazon's Prime service, with which the company now packages a broad range of "free" streaming resources into the annual cost of the service.

If my experience is at all typical of other consumers, I would guess that Amazon's Prime strategy is central to its whole attempt to conquer worldwide retailing and therefore that amazing delivery capacity lies at its heart, whether instantly via things such as video streaming or highly expedited in the case of tangible products.

Now Amazon could continue to rest comfortably upon its existing accomplishments by which it has used third-party delivery services to achieve a big part of its goals. But it is not. Indeed, it is spending huge sums of money to build massive warehousing facilities all over the place in support of a long-term plan to achieve super-fast delivery. And, in doing so, it has abandoned its former (and highly effective) strategy of trying to avoid physical "presence" in the various states in order to avoid having to hold back sales/use taxes from its customers.

So, fanciful or not in their present state of technological development and in the present state of legal and regulatory tangles that might arise, drones of the type shown in Amazon's promotional materials can hardly be called a simple marketing ploy to divert attention from some otherwise critical publicity affecting Amazon or its founder. The huge benefits to Amazon as a universal retailer that might from such a delivery mechanism are stupendous and obvious. If it should prove unfeasible to gain these benefits owing to technological limitations, that is one thing. If regulators should attempt to freeze delivery mechanisms to current forms and bar new ones such as drones, that is yet another thing. Such barriers may prove insuperable and cause the effort to fail. But to accuse Amazon of not being ready, willing, and able to devote even vast resources to the potential use of drones as part of its broader strategy - and instead to be using this as a mere publicity stunt - is, in my view, to miss the obvious. Amazon has a long-term goal of becoming the primary shopping source for millions of consumers across a broad range of products. It wants to leverage technology in ways that help remove the physical-presence advantage used by traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. If it can do so by building vast warehouses and then finding a magic way of delivering products to consumers in ways that better what they can do by visiting the local retail store, why not go for it. And not just go for it but _really_ go for it, with a massive investment of time, energy, and capital with the long-term view of using this strategy to achieve potential exponential growth over competitors.

Whatever else this is, it cannot be mere vaporware. The fact that its announcement may have been accompanied by conventional marketing hype and by what may have even been a cynical deal with news outlets to agree to promote it on a big shopping day only confirms the seriousness of the effort, in my view. People like to get excited about exciting possibilities. Steve Jobs knew that and his way of presenting has become legendary. Mr. Bezos has some of that same flair and, when combined with adept entrepreneurial skills, stands to make an amazing mark in the annals of commerce. He may win in the end or he may lose. But he is going for the big win and he is doing it with flair.

You may like what Amazon is doing or you may hate it but it can't be denied that it is bold, daring, and very real. The author here misses it altogether in suggesting otherwise.

<comment><USER3> "Whatever else this is, it cannot be mere vaporware. "

I am unclear on why not, exactly? 4-5 years before it appears, with the obvious possibility that it never does for regulatory reasons, technology reasons....

At this point I wouldn't call it vaporware, its not that far along.

It is still a fantasy. A _nice_ fantasy. I loved the idea. but, for now, just a fantasy.

Check back in 4-5 years (or 5-10 years?) when something has actually been delivered to the market, and lets have a glass of whiskey and be amazed at the futuristic technology.

<comment><USER4> A startup in Australia, Flirtey,† has partnered with a university textbook seller to deliver books via hexacopter on/near campus. They are hoping to begin operation next March. When the drone arrives, the customer presses a button on their smartphone app, and the package is lowered down to them.

†[http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone- will-...](http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone-will-deliver- packages-in-australia-from-march-2014.html)

Video: [http://vimeo.com/76606906](http://vimeo.com/76606906)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US.

it _is_ a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.

<comment><USER5> > Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a > few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across > the US.

Not necessarily. When a new address comes up, a human operator might takes a look at a satellite image of the address and give the drone an appropriate location to land on the property. That data would then be stored. 15 seconds with a human, one time only, is all it would take to make this easy in most neighborhoods.

<comment><USER6> That's not at all the problem.

What about navigating TFRs? Class B airspace? What about failures of the rotors whilst flying over heavily populated areas? Will these things be equipped with TCAS to avoid oncoming traffic? What happens if the path-finding algorithm to get from Amazon's warehouse to your house goes batshit insane and flies it in the approach path to LAX? Who files the flight plan for each of these things?

To quote Steve Yegge, "people will die... if it's YOU... you're going to be really pissed off." [0]

[0] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever- lega...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized- marijuana.html)

<comment><USER7> Not to mention UFOs. And as someone said, the drones would make archery a very popular sport again. ;)

<comment><USER8> Think skeet shooting ... with a reward [http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute- shoppi...](http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute-shopping)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems obvious to me that Bezos took this one public so early to garner public support so that the FAA can't just sit on it forever. All of Amazon's other initiatives didn't need some federal regulator to OK it before they could start selling it.

I think this is an effective solution to getting a notoriously slow agency to move on an item. No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the FAA.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Even if Amazon doesn't end up launching its own drones, you can be sure that Fedex and UPS will eventually. That helps Amazon too.

<comment><USER11> UPS is a slow moving entity because of its enormous size and culture. Their delivery system was more or less handled manually until about 10 years ago. 15 years ago they were still using punch clocks for hourly workers. "Eventually" could mean 25-50 years from now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems disingenuous for this blog to suggest that MacKenzie Bezos's negative review of the Bezos book was part of the same orchestrated spin campaign as the drone story. That review didn't simply object to the tone or the message of the book, but also pointed out specific factual errors the book made, errors that were later tacitly acknowledged by the author.

<comment><USER13> I agree. I'm totally on board that there was some serious negotiation by Amazon (Prime) to get the piece on Amazon Prime Air to air the eve of "Cyber Monday" so you'd see as much Amazon Prime as possible.

I'd believe that it's intentionally out there to put quiet pressure on the FAA to lighten its regulations. I could even see it being run to distract from the Mother Jones-esque pieces about how terrible it is to be a seasonal employee at an Amazon Warehouse.

But this being a reaction to the Bezos book? That seems like a bit much.

<comment><USER14> But it's not just the book (which by the way is getting excellent reviews from people other than Jeff Bezos' wife). It's about the worker strike in Germany and the other negative news about Amazon. They are following the Google playbook of creating goodwill and good PR through these types of "innovations" that are destined to remain as vaporware or never really considered by the company to be a real business for them to get into. Companies like Google and Amazon need it terribly because their businesses on their own aren't going to create the type of goodwill that releasing a product like the iPhone and iPad does for Apple.

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/amazons- dron...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/amazons-drone-fleet- delivers-what-bezos-wants-an-image-of-ingenuity)

<comment><USER15> Positive book reviews have little to do with accuracy. The overwhelming majority of people that are reading the book have no way of knowing what the truth is.

<comment><USER14> The reviews I'm talking about aren't the reviews on the Amazon book listing but reviews that address the investigative quality of the book and its sourcing. Critical reviews, not reviews by the average Joe.

<comment><USER16> I have a friend who worked down the hall from Bezos for five years after Amazon was founded. If there is anything in that book that states or implies that Bezos in an insane power hungry tyrant, then it's spot-on accurate. That creepy forced laugh of his you can experience in the 60 minutes interview should give it away.

He told me: Your reaction to the laugh is healthy. You should be scared of this guy. He can't get enough power. When I answered an online quiz "11 reasons your boss may be a psychopath" (or something like that) i gave him 10 1/2 out of 11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People say that there's usually about a 10 year lag before tech from the military enters civilian use. Since drones showed up roughly 2003, it stands to reason that 2013 is when we should first starting seeing the tech become civilian viable. In fact that seems to be true, there's a whole lot of DIY material out there, and that's from people who don't have real world experience. I wouldn't be surprised if as military contracts wind down the large amount of people who just developed a new set of expertise may try to break out into the private sector. The only thing stopping the tech seems to be the FAA. Obviously its not something to take lightly, there are real safety concerns here... but its not completely science fiction.

Why do we accept that modern warfare can be fought almost entirely with drones (libya?) but when it comes to civilian applications it's a fairy tail publicity stunt?

I think bezos wants to turn a profit, and lowering delivery costs, and giving faster service might only make his company that much more valuable. I don't doubt for a second that this is a genuine effort.

<comment><USER18> You're confusing huge ridiculously expensive military drones, which are essentially small planes, with what Amazon is showing us, which are essentially small helicopters.

There's no way in the world these tiny drones can fly 10 miles each way, carry 5lbs of payload, deliver the package perfectly on the driveway/doorstep, and cost low enough to not be a financial nightmare. That's not even accounting for dealing with FAA, weather issues, safety issues.

There will need to be a few technological revolutions before it works. #1 - battery technology. Current batteries just can't handle long enough flights.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, but who are you? Who are you to stand up and call Amazon's idea unviable?

Why is their idea unviable? Because they have no proof?

Well you certainly proved how unviable the idea is with _your_ lack of proof.

Quite frankly, when it comes to Bezos vs "ye", I have to say that the billionaire owner of one of the most successful stores in our world is SLIGHTLY more credible than "ye", random commenter who has no domain experience and no evidence for literally a single word they said.

I mean honestly, in a conversation about credibility and evidence, you thought providing neither makes for a good argument?

<comment><USER20> It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.

<comment><USER21> Comparatively inexpensive (<$500) consumer quadcopters already have 100% payload fractions (e.g. 1lb of payload per lb of vehicle weight), so 1.5:1 isn't such a jump from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As soon as I saw the name Dan Lyons as the author, I son't even bother reading it. His past articles are filled with nonsense.

<comment><USER23> Good catch. Thanks for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This piece is right on. Amazon package drones are total vaporware at this point; the only reason to announce them is to improve the competitive positioning of Amazon in the press.

This is no different than the "slate" announcement by Microsoft and HP at CES 2010, which was widely panned and never produced any actual products for sale. But for a short time, it put MS in all the news stories about the iPad.

<comment><USER25> You can call it vaporware, but someone is going to utilize this technology. Companies in the other countries already are.

The technology is so new, and has yet to get to it's pinnacle. Bezos properly address the element that is missing, "redundancy". Whether you like it or not, these things will be flying above your head within 3 years. Whether Amazon is the one to do it? You think it's going to be UPS, FedEx, or USPS? My money is on Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a viable option over wheeled vehicles when you consider more direct transit, reduction in delays due to traffic, and the reduction in weight of the delivery vehicle, but I'd imagine this advantage would only exist for fixed- wing delivery vehicles, not quad/hex/octo-copters.

$20 says that if this ever happens in the real world, the delivery vehicles are mechanically _very_ different from what's shown in the promo video.

<comment><USER27> What I wonder is why nobody is pointing out that delivering less than 2kg in 30 min in a radius of 10 km can be done freely on a cheap pizza using plain old human labour.

I fail to imagine at what stage Amazon drone become cheaper considering the reliability of drone and the complexity of navigating a dense urban environment (I assume it is to be used there) Also, if it can be done cheaply enough, takeaways will eventually use the same system. I wonder how that will scale ...

<comment><USER28> While the pizza delivery will be cheap now but given time for the technology to mature and then the scale of the operation will make drone technology more cheaper. Obviously it will take a quite a time before it adds to profit line. As usual Amazon will keep absorbing the losses for that time and it is well equipped to that, if amazon history tells us anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well that didn't take long[1] :-) Perhaps Bezos is taking his cues from Google who trots out their self driving car when ever they want to boost their image with the public. It is interesting to watch from the perspective of companies balancing the 'reality' that they are doing everything they can to maximize their influencer, revenue, Etc. And still keep a friendly face on it. There was a time that the only information the public got about a company was their advertisements.

I subscribe to the notion that this particular stunt was both, technology investigation and PR piece. It sets Amazon apart from Walmart as "new technology" which carries a bit of cachet with the buying public, and there are some very real and interesting questions that can be informed by building a prototype system (which refers back to our discussion a while ago about actually doing something to figure out how hard it is _really_ ) and since it is so far out all it does is cause worry on the part of competitors.

Seems like a reasonable strategy to me.

[1] A blog post arguing some technology demo is a PR stunt

</comment><comment><USER30> Who cares? It sparks the public imagination and gets people excited for the future. It's the kind of thing that can get a child interested in robotics or can give entrepreneurs a new level of insight into where commerce is headed. It sets a bar for ambition. Also, how often is it that we're dazzled with TED talks showcasing university research projects that promise the world and never make it to market? Is the point, ultimately, _to_ make it to market, or to submit something bold to the consciousness?

Secondly, how will it work out for Amazon, in its coveted "long-run," if it erodes public trust by showing something it doesn't _really_ think will ship? I think showing it in public gives them an onus to execute. As others have mentioned, it also creates an onus for the FAA to take this challenge seriously and to accelerate its thinking about this new direction.

<comment><USER31> Indeed - I wish more companies were goaded into doing interesting, exciting things in reaction to scathing biographies. Quick, someone write a scathing biography of Elon Musk - we'll have people on Mars in 3 years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ouch, a bit harsh, but my first question after reading this was: why are Hubspot and its CEO so upset about the CBS piece?

<comment><USER33> I'm a dev at HubSpot and though I have no way of knowing this for sure, I don't think our CEO was involved in this blog post.

We have a lot of blog posts, and I don't _think_ they're meant to represent the views of the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> While I agree the 60 minutes segment seemed like a commercial, I don't understand why one would waste time attacking this innovation (not the helicopters, but the logistics behind it). A more meaningful discussion would be what the actual objections of the FAA are, what the repercussions of drones in the air are, etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> In the UK, Waterstones (equivalent to Barnes and Noble) have announced a competing product: [http://blog.waterstones.com/?p=15525](http://blog.waterstones.com/?p=15525)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure the target audience for 60 minutes is that similar to the audience that would care about drone delivery or Cyber Monday so much. Suggesting that Amazon may have intentionally wanted the story aired the day before Cyber Monday seems like a bit of a stretch. Also, the fact that Amazon wants to do drone delivery in the future has been discussed previously, and they still say it's a few years out, so this isn't much of a story to begin with.

<comment><USER37> It's the other way around, really. News organisations want to be relevant, so will all have been looking around for Cyber Monday stories. This "narrative shift" is just a way for Amazon to make sure the stories that ran prior to and during Cyber Monday were not about working conditions in its warehouses, its international tax arrangements, or the death of independent retailers.

An organisation can very effectively dictate the precise timing of a story's running using tools such as an embargo (which determines the opening of the publishing window) and pre-arranged release of the story to other media (which tells an outlet with an exclusive that they should be publishing before this time). So a conversation along the lines of "We've got this great story, would you treat it properly if we gave it to you on 1 December, ahead of when it hits the wires at 8am on 2 December?" does the trick nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seems like a long stretch. Who cares if the CEO is a nice guy? Steve Jobs is known as a terrible boss, but no one cares. The only thing matters to the mass consumers and the company's customers is the products the company produces.

<comment><USER39> Sadly, yes. Further, people dont really care where or how products are made. We get all this negative PR about how appalling working conditions are where many top selling brands are made, but there is no noticeable dent in sales as a result. If shoppers cared, they would shop differently.

However, its a lot to do with the egos of these CEOs, and what not. You and I may not care how nice or horrible these people may or may not be, but the people getting the negativity do. They dont like the idea that the public think they are not very nice, or what ever.

So, I'd suggest its possible its more about individual ego, than sales. Sales is a convenient excuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >You line up Charlie Rose to do one of his famous softball-tossing puff pieces..

You can't claim that Amazon destroyed the credibility of CBS and at the same time claim that one of their top anchors regularly gives "soft-ball" interviews. Well, to be honest you can, but you'll sound like an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER40> I haven't seen anyone mention another key PR benefit of announcing this early: to take the wind out of Google announcing delivery via self-driving car.

Google is probably more threatening to Amazon than any other company, and they have a clear interest in attacking physical good delivery in a manner that is deflationary relative to Amazon - almost certainly by using self-driving vehicles to provide local delivery to existing retailers, gaining access to the inventory databases in the process.

Google likes to do PR stunts to project an image of futuristic technological leadership. It looks like they have a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER41> What the fuck is with all the hit pieces today? Who the hell cares what comes about it. It was an interesting little side show.

Guess this is the story that's going to rack up page views for at least the beginning of the week.

<comment><USER42> They're not hit pieces, they're educated responses to a marketing announcement.

<comment><USER43> Pfft. It's a hit piece, and I don't even like Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Vaporware aside, revealing the Amazon Drone project before Cyber Monday was an enormous PR coup, with all the press tucked along. Kudos to Amazon's marketing department.

</comment><comment><USER45> _Amazon somehow got CBS and 60 Minutes to create a 14-minute free ad spot for Amazon on the eve of this huge shopping day._

This is a fairly one-sided assessment of the situation. CBS and 60 Minutes benefit as much from the piece airing on the eve of Black Monday as Amazon, arguably more so, since Amazon needs little advertisement for its services.

I watched the piece and frankly found it to be somewhat of a puff-piece as well (Amazon was given too much credit in my opinion for being customer- centric). However, 60 Minutes caters to a broader audience than most of us, so they aren't going to get into pricing theory or the merits of Amazon S3. They describe the company to people as if it is the first time they've ever gotten a glimpse inside the website, because many people know little about it or its history.

60 Minutes almost always times its pieces to coincide with related events, and I think it makes the stories more interesting because of it.

Edit: If the goal of the piece was in fact to conjure up free positive publicity for Amazon I have to believe it worked. Last night my FB news feed was a flurry with people posting their love of Amazon and how they were now going to be loyal customers because "Amazon puts the customer first."

<comment><USER46> What surprises me is the naivety of most people who seem to think that 60 minutes and the like follow their nose for stories instead of having complicated marketing and PR deals behind them. There is no way that 15 minutes of sunday night prime-time TV is just given away to a puff-piece because the shows editors thought it might make a good story.

Next thing people will be shocked that Oprah is paid to endorse products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I find this whole publicity stunt by Amazon curiously similar to the publicity stunt that Domino's did back in June, where they deliver pizzas via drones.

<comment><USER48> Do no one remember TacoCopter? [http://tacocopter.com/](http://tacocopter.com/)

Most brilliant PR move ever. #suckers

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> CBS and 60 minutes lost their credibility long before this.

<comment><USER50> Took the words out of my mouth. It's mostly puff pieces nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Perhaps it was prior art. I can already feel the ground rumbling with the coming stampede of "X... but with teh _drones_!" patents.

<comment><USER52> _" The Tacocopter of [Something]"_ is one of my favorite answers to the _" The something of something"_ startup idea game. _" The Tacocopter of Twitter"_ I think has been my best so far; some sort of telegraph service that delivers your printed telegraph message with a quadcopter instead of a courier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The CBS interview was primarily focused on Amazon's technology. It was only fitting that they show off something they are still tinkering with that shows what the future might be. The drones are easily possible - the technology already exists. If Amazon doesn't do it, lots of other private companies will.

But I am a little shocked that this cool little announcement has brought Amazon's critics out of the woodwork. IMO, if you try to ride the coattails of other things getting press just to get your very negative views out, you are just as bad as the entity you are criticizing. Congratulations, a few more people read your negative opinion of Amazon and its founder than would have had you not tied it into the drone story. Nearly all of them will still be shopping on Amazon this Christmas.

<comment><USER53> I don't really see it as about criticism of Amazon--though there was that tone in Lyons' piece. Amazon has a PR department and they did their job remarkably well in this case in that they succeeded in landing essentially a puff piece about future technological concepts related to fast parcel delivery with a supposedly serious journalistic institution the day before the busiest online shopping day of the year.

Kudos to Amazon PR. Not so much to 60 Minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Drone/autonomous vehicle impact on supply chain discussed here on Saturday, ahead of 60 Mins piece.

[http://www.ccjdigital.com/self-driving-planes-trains- trucks-...](http://www.ccjdigital.com/self-driving-planes-trains-trucks-will- lead-supply-chain-redesign/?full-article=true)

Got the Reddit treatment here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1rrvxb/selfdrivi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1rrvxb/selfdriving_planes_trains_trucks_will_lead_supply/)

Conclusion: Gobolinks

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klecksography#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klecksography#History)

</comment><comment><USER55> Personal opinion, but this article should be on someone's personal blog, not promoted through Hubspot. It seems after a quick Google search, Dan Lyons has stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the past, and it's probably something I would avoid getting into from a company POV.

[http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click- wh...](http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-whores-and- paid-apologists-welcome-to-the-silicon-cesspool/)

[http://parislemon.com/post/17587323277/bat-shit- crazy](http://parislemon.com/post/17587323277/bat-shit-crazy)

</comment><comment><USER56> I think people keep forgetting that Bezos has a longer planning horizon than most people. "... won't realistically arrive in the real world for another four or five years, which in realspeak means they're a decade or more away." Sure, Amazon used this as an opportunity for an image boost, sales boost ... but what else does this move also do?

Reminds me a bit of: [http://xkcd.com/1287/](http://xkcd.com/1287/)

People who want to be ornery will find reasons to act ornery.

</comment><comment><USER57> If Prime Air happens, I predict a boom in the illicit 'package intercept' business.

Knock a drone down, "win" a prize is going to appeal to percentage of the population.

<comment><USER58> When I lived in a big apartment building, sometimes my Amazon packages would go missing. The thief got an EVO 4G screen protector, a micro USB cable, and some hand towels.

Most Amazon orders aren't expensive things. Going to jail for a few years for hijacking an aircraft just isn't worth it, when you can just wait for the package to be delivered and steal it from someone's doorstep. Even then, probably not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I don't think they had much credibility left.

</comment><comment><USER60> That Charlie Rose refuses to turn his show into "Trash TV: Business Edition" counts toward his credibility, not against it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Bezos attempting to be the next great master product revealer, but a barnums style gag and prank won't have lasting media staying power like jobs. That and he could improve his speaking ability.

I would have been more impressed if he showed off a fleet of electric/autonomous self driven deliver robot trucks, because that is more realistic to amazon.

<comment><USER62> End customers don't care about your CEO's speaking ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I think the real reason people are frustrated with Amazon's announcement is because Amazon is getting/will get the credit for the drone delivery idea despite the fact that numerous hackers/engineers/companies have been working on (and presenting) this idea for years.

</comment><comment><USER64> Even the still for the youtube video seems to have picked out the two big honking signs for "amazon prime"

[http://img.youtube.com/vi/6in- MZeeeGk/hqdefault.jpg](http://img.youtube.com/vi/6in-MZeeeGk/hqdefault.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER65> I predicted this about a week ago in some thread complaining about Amazon delivery when I said I lived in Texas and my packages were being delivered by Blue Origin, which worked fine, but one time left a big hole where my car once was.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't agree that 60 Mins loses its credibility. Some of my friends and family didn't believe me until I told them it was 60 Mins. Then they believed. If that isn't credibility, I don't know what is.

</comment><comment><USER67> It should not surprise anyone that a large amount of articles, stories, etc... in every publication, every day are simply because of PR. Not sure why Amazon is being picked on here.

</comment><comment><USER68> Delivery drones makes for more interesting and stimulating news than the usual b movie plots involving terrorists that come up any time the d word is mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER69> This finally makes sense, much more sense than advanced drones being used to deliver dead trees.

</comment><comment><USER70> Nice, buy a $10 book. Own a $1000 drone.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is almost exactly how I felt when I saw that Google was "taking on death".

Some of these SV companies are better than others at this kind of thing. Amazon, Google, and Apple have this ability to make otherwise skeptical journalists just turn their brains off...Google's "death stunt" was the cover of Newsweek for god's sake.</comment>


How to Make $80,000 per Month on the Apple App Store (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-on-the-apple-app-store-bdb943862e88?date=2018 <comment><USER2> Wtf? Some of my apps have been rejected in the app store submission process the first time for spelling mistakes alone. How can something like this slip through? And how is it possible that scamware like this is in the top ten for two month?

<comment><USER3> Asking that myself very often - there is a couple of categories of apps with bullshit and scam on top of the top-grossing lists. Annoying, and Apple should definitely make reporting those easier and tighten up on fraud checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156)

<comment><AUTHOR> Re-posting old things that are interesting is not OK? It was tagged as being from Jan 2017

<comment><USER4> This is in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

The cutoff is "about a year". That window varies a bit depending on the article. In this case, because the story had such a lot of attention on HN in 2017, I stretched the window; but it was a borderline call.

In general it's just fine to post older things that are interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Japan PM Abe: See no need to raise sales tax beyond 10% for decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-abe/japan-pm-abe-see-no-need-to-raise-sales-tax-beyond-10-for-decade-idUSKCN1TY0M3 <comment><USER2> Sales taxes are regressive - people who don't have a lot of money have to spend more of it to stay alive, and therefore pay more sales tax :/ I'd rather have a higher income tax and no sales tax. Income taxes are much more visible, but don't suffer from penalizing people who can't save.

<comment><USER3> What's your opinion on a sales tax but simultaneously making food and medicine tax-free?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why this is on HN. It looks to be a generic "politician makes non-promise" story.

<comment><USER5> It is not a "politician makes non-promise" story. It is actually a very credible claim because the Japanese government doesn't even need more tax income as they can lend freely.

The government can lend as much Yen as they want. The tax hike is something that can help them get inflation, which has been too low for very long.

<comment><USER6> Even if it is not an empty promise I still don't understand how this is on topic for HN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Japanese economy is a mystery to me.

I think the state tried just every possible thing to reverse currency trends and ease fiscal restraints, but just all failed including an enormous quantitative easing (money printing basically)

</comment><comment><USER8> >earlier this year suggested Japan's sales tax needed to rise to as much as 26% to pay for bulging social security costs

Wouldn't that absolutely crater consumer spending? I know if I had to pay 26% sales tax suddenly everything I buy would be from China and ship labeled "personal gift".

<comment> the-dude NL is at 21% and there are other countries in the EU which are around 25%. Personally I think it is crazy.

<comment><USER9> Yikes! Talk about theft of labor. A 25% sales tax means one in four consumptive dollars is taken away. Ouch.

<comment><USER10> Taxes go to the State, which ultimately goes back to you and to those in needs. It's not a theft, it's a shared account for the common good. Moreover it's a tax on consumption, not on production.

High taxation is what makes something like Healthcare so good and eventually cheap for everyone, contrary to the disastrous situation in the US. As a French I'm more than happy to pay 20% VAT if I know it's going to benefit everyone.

<comment><USER11> Of course it is theft since it is taking away from you the outcome of your labor with the usage of force. If you go by that logic then you might as well abolish private property for the common good.

<comment><USER12> By your logic every tax is theft, which is obviously ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> So what is tax if it is not theft? Genuine question to see what is your definition of theft and how taxes do not fit such definition. If you have no say in paying for something, how is it not theft?

<comment><USER10> You do have a saying. Speak to your representative if you want to adjust the percentage. Taxation is a commonly agreed sharing of goods. Theft is not agreed upon.

If you live with your significant other and you agreed on a 50/50 rule for paying rent, would you say they/this relationship is stealing money from you ? That doesn't make any sense.

If you don't want to be taxed then don't live in the society and don't use _any_ of the things it provide: no roads, no healthcare, no police (so if someone actually steals from you you're not entitled to complain because you're not part of the society), no food or water coming from a store... If you don't want to participate to the society, then you _don 't_ participate to the society.

<comment><USER11> > You do have a saying

Typically no, since you are tribute to:

\- your government being able to manage its funds well. Well too bad, they do a piss poor job at it and keep increasing taxes year after year.

\- the majority during elections not voting for more government intervention, which would lead to more taxes as well.

Plus, your example with your significant other does not make sense since you do have a contract/agreement. As a citizen no such agreement/contract is ever signed with you: the conditions are imposed and force is used upon you if you refuse to pay taxes.

> If you don't want to participate to the society, then you don't participate > to the society.

That still does not make taxation not theft, since you are never asked how much you want to contribute voluntarily for example: you never enter a contract as a willing party. Plus, let's say you don't want to "participate in society", the state will still find you and jail you for not paying taxes even if you decide to live on your own.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Compromised Zoom Credentials Swapped in Underground Forums - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/compromised-zoom-credentials-underground-forums/154616/ <comment><USER2> Zoom wished they stayed semi-popular, I'm sure</comment>


Kenya finds huge water reserve - <AUTHOR> http://www.itv.com/news/2013-09-10/potential-significance-of-discovery-cannot-be-overstated/

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitter here. HN'ers may be occasionally asked by non-technically-savvy people, "Why are we spending so much on science/technology/space when there are so many problems here on Earth?"

This article is a good answer to those kinds of questions.</comment>


Do Consumers Have a Right to Opt Out of Advertising? - <AUTHOR> http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/consumers-right-opt-advertising/ <comment><USER2> I would say it's a grey area. Some places like news sites I 100% run ad block because the ads are intrusive and ruin the experience of read several paragraphs of text. But if it is a service I like or am watching a youtube channel I want to support I'll disable ad block. Either way opting out is always in the user's power.</comment>


Turn your browser into a drawpad - <AUTHOR> http://dfernandez.me/articles/3%20-%20drawing%20bookmarklet/

<comment><USER2> This is really nice. I didn't know the notepad trick either. And even if people don't find the drawing trick as useful as the notepad one, I think they will, at least, have some fun drawing. :-)

Thanks for sharing this.</comment>


"NULL" license plate earns hacker $12,000 in parking tickets - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/wiseguy-changes-license-plate-to-null-gets-12k-in-parking-tickets/ <comment><USER2> For those who are interested in the HN community thoughts, the discussion is over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676904)</comment>


Ask HN: What is something I should and can be automating right now? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would pay a lot of money for a stock trading bot that just generates $200 a month or etc if I just deposit $2000 into a brokerage and let the little bot do its thing.

I was running a decently profitable scalping operation but the time invested made it silly to continue. However, I could really use the $200 in monthly income, and I'm not too afraid to lose the $2000 principal investment if the bot is coded well.

The other option is a video poker bot, which is already freely available. The issue of course is getting it past the casino :)

<comment><USER3> I, too, would like a bot that generated 213% annualized compound returns.

<comment><USER2> It's sustainable with small numbers.

That is to say, 213% gains from trading $2000 on JNUG/JDST is a lot more feasible than 213% gains on $75,000,000 USD worth of AMZN calls

<comment><USER4> Why do you say that? Yes, $75M poses liquidity issues, but that doesn't mean that a smaller amount is _easier_. I'd wager that a smaller portfolio is harder because you can't diversify to mitigate your risk.

<comment><USER2> It's really hard to find 75m worth of buyers. You can't buy and sell as freely as you please, like you said, because of liquidity.

I can buy JDST at 9am for $60 and sell at 9:45am for $60.60. On a balance of $2000, this is an easy $20 for basically no risk, imo.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty cool that it never goes down and you don't ever buy at $60 and sell at $59.40.

<comment><USER2> Agree, if you are buying only on days where RSI is extremely low (below 30) then you can be much more confident you won't sell at a loss compared to buying when RSI is above 50

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Groceries! We don't have to go to the store anymore with Walmart + Kroger adding the ability to pick out your groceries online. You pay on the app, and an employee fetches the items, bags them, and has them ready for pick up at the time you specify.

It actually saves money because you're not buying things that you happen to see, and only getting what you need.

</comment><comment><USER6> DNS deployment - see Infrastructure as Code.</comment>


CMU-led nonprofit lands major robotics grant - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2017/01/13/CMU-robots-get-federal-grant/stories/201701130150 <comment><USER2> It would certainly make more sense to have it in Moon township near the airport. There is more open land, there is no need to cross the bridges, the facilities for warehouse and shipping are nearby (Fedex has a hub at PIT airport). There is enough free land area to build supplier locations next door to the main plant. The airport corridor (I376) is being rapidly expanded and has a lot of new business space. Housing is available and cheaper than the city. PIT airport has a major military installation (Air Refueling Wing) and is likely to gain another in the next round of base closing so it would make it convenient to work with military applications.

The main reason to have it in downtown Pittsburgh is to be near CMU. Perhaps CMU could consider opening a robotics extension campus in Moon. In Pittsburgh parking, storage, shipping, suppliers, and future growth would all be space constrained.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you walk away or push onwards? - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
I'm in the middle of a personal struggle and want to hear what you would do.
1 year ago, myself and 3 partners quit our day jobs to work on our SaaS product full time. I had already built an MVP on nights and weekends.  We used that to raise a seed round.
Over the next year we hired a dozen employees, gained hundreds of customers, and achieved profitability.
Everything is great, except for one co-founder. For reasons ranging from lack of cohesion to poor communication to employee complaints, it was clear that this person needed to be removed from the company.
All other founders agreed and we removed this person. We offered this person a reasonable package (equity vested into, severance, keep benefits, etc) and he verbally agreed.
A couple days later, we were served a demand letter from this person's high priced litigator demanding that his full equity be vested immediately.
Due to unfortunate lawyering nonsense, the company is not likely to have this deemed frivolous by the courts.
We're now completely stuck. Our lawyers say it would cost $150,000 to fight this in court and would take 18 months. We don't have that kind of money or time to spare. We're being forced to accept an unfair deal giving this person equity he did not earn.
I don't know if I can live with this outcome. I (and my other founders) have worked so hard for what we've built. I've given up my entire personal life for this company.
I don't know how much longer I can keep pushing through this. Is this a sign to move on or forge ahead and give this person something undeserved from my own hard work? What would you do?
Tl;dr: Scumbag cofounder screwing the company over. No choice to bend over and take it. Would you walk? <comment><USER3> This is a tough situation to be in and you have my empathy.

1) If you have properly set up a vesting schedule in the operating agreement his claims would be pretty baseless and assuming there's no other basis for his claims I'd venture to say you wouldn't need 150k to fight this in court.

2) Even if it turns out to be costly to fight in court, consider this: What would this person's equity be worth if you offered it in a fund raise? From your description it sounds like the fight over equity is a pretty recent event so it's unlikely you'd be forced to bend over immediately. Would it be an option to raise capital for the company and use part of the proceeds to go to court?

3) If all other options fail I'd approach the ousted co-founder together and say he can have his shares but then everyone would walk away from the company due to misaligned incentives and he'd be left with nothing. If you go this route you'd have to make this 100% clear and there can't be a single doubt about that you're going to do this.

4) Talk to a lawyer if you haven't done so already.

Hope my answers provide a little help in this matter.

Edit: added point 4)

<comment><USER3> To OP: Not sure why you deleted your reply but anyway:

Here's three more thoughts (I'm not a lawyer so please double-check this with one if you think it's relevant):

5) Could you get a loan to fund this? Do you have any valuable assets in the company you could use as mortgage? I don't know how it is in the US (I assume that's where you are based) but should you be victorious in court you can probably recover any legal fees from the ousted co-founder.

6) Depending on how you've set up the operating agreement there may also be the option of issuing more shares to the active members of management, thereby diluting down the ousted co-founder.

7) Depending on how much was invested so far and by whom and depending on whether the business is based on any jointly owned core IP or not, you may be able to shut down the company and re-incorporate later as a new company without the co-founder.

From experience I can also tell you that whatever you decide to do, you need to have a good gut feeling about it. If you settle it needs to be on terms that still make you feel proud of the business and about what you've achieved and you need to feel motivated to move forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has it occurred to you that this person is actually entitled to hang on to their shares?

You all made the choice to start the business together. You had the opportunity to work out ironclad provision for founders exiting.

You all worked to get it to this point.

Even if you have lost your respect for this persons contribution, it was part of the deal that they get these shares.

I understand totally if you don't like it, but have you considered that in fact this person might actually be in the right?

Lesson learned, give them the shares, live with the consequences of your decisions. If your company is going as well as you say then it is not the end of the world.

The co-founder you are referring to probably describes you guys as scumbag cofounders unfairly and unjustly booting him out.

Alternatively, get rid of the damn lawyers and ask this person what he wants to make a clean exit deal - it may be less than the full share entitlement and if that is the case then maybe you should take the deal.

And for gods sake stop spending money on lawyers - you are destroying your company firstly via time dilution and secondly by wasting money. Part of running a company successfully is to know exactly what it means to win, to compromise and what it means to take a pragmatic outcome that lets you get on with the job.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's great you have a signed vesting schedule - I think everybody here is confused by the problem. Nobody has any insight into what alleged deception you are being accused of, and you didn't share (and that's completely fine).

It sounds like the "don't have that kind of time" is specifically because of "We're in talks with (really) big pockets", but again, we have no insight into what those talks might look like.

Disclosure: IANAL, just an asshole.

Is this an acquisition? If so, be really sure they actually want to acquire you, then maybe it's worth just giving the guy his shares to get your deal done (or attempting to negotiation - always negotiate)

Is this an investment? Again, how sure are you they really want to invest, and how long can you live without it? You should talk to your current team and potential investor about possibly fixing the cap table and how you could achieve that (ie cram down the value of the shares and top up current employees)

When I'm in the right (fuck it, even when I'm not), with a preponderance of evidence, I usually tend to not take kindly to people coming after me - <USER2> least for a bit, you have little to lose to start the process of going to court - you can always settle between now and then. This is like any other negotiation, his first salvo is give me everything, you're turn to respond in kind with "go fuck yourself because X,Y and Z, and by the way, we will have to counter file as you are causing irreparable harm to our company because of A, B and C".

You can always borrow money over time - ie 10K to start, and see how it goes, maybe you settle and you have to find a way to pay it back, maybe 10K is enough to get the guy to back off.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is what I, taking into account my personal situation of course, would do:

\- Make it clear to the co-founder that the business will be between much more likely and 100% likely to shut down if they maintain this complaint. While this seems like it's showing them the power they have, it's much more important to show them how fragile the value of any shares they have are.

\- Make an offer between the original offer and 100% vesting. Make it cash heavy if you can, possibly contingent on funding. Make this offer exploding - they need to decide within 1 week and if they don't, you will pull everything except what you feel legally required to put on the table (the vested stock only, no benefits, no severance) and fight this.

This will drag on and kill your company if you let it, and settling could work. If settling doesn't work, you're in a new position, but you need to get this in a position where it will be resolved or not resolved quickly. Then you will know what you're dealing with more clearly, but you are not left with the binary choice you think you are.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does your cofounder read HN? You might find yourself reading this thread in court.... or your cofounder might turn up here to comment.

<comment><USER7> They went through and deleted comments with more details, interestingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have to decide which is harder to take: the loss of equity or the opportunity cost + risk of going to court.

Edit: I think you're going to have to take a loss either way. It's a matter of doing the cost-benefit analysis and betting on probabilities.

</comment><comment><USER8> > we were served a demand letter

Your cofounder isn't suing you yet so don't panic. They're playing the intimidation game to get what they want.

> We're now completely stuck.

No, you're not. You're in a negotiation and you need to show strength.

> Our lawyers say it would cost $150,000 to fight this in court and would take > 18 months.

Try to see if the other side would agree to non-binding mediation to try to resolve the issue before bringing it to court.

> We don't have that kind of money or time to spare.

Does the other side? Does your cofounder really want to bankrupt the company in order to get equity worth zippo?

> I've given up my entire personal life for this company.

> Would you walk?

You already knew the answer before you asked the question.

</comment><comment><USER9> "For reasons ranging from lack of cohesion to poor communication to employee complaints, it was clear that this person needed to be removed from the company."

Are we talking about just bad attitude or behavior that could have legal implications?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused. You state that there's a 36 month vesting agreement with a 1 year cliff. Why doesn't the vesting agreement make this a non-issue?

</comment><comment><USER11> 100% "shotgun" vesting is common in this situation.

Now, whether those shares are liquid or not depends on the RSU or options structure.

It's common for a Co-Founder to exit with 100% vesting, but the actual payout of those shares is contingent on a liquidation, funding, or revenue event.

Consider 50% cash now and 50% contingent on achieving $1M in ARR (for example).

You also need to consider your reputation in the industry. Framing this as "unfair" does not send a particularly good signal... especially since _you_ terminated this person, who presumably took significant risk to quit a day job and build a company from scratch.</comment>


SpaceX says helium loading issue caused accident, seeks 2016 return to flight - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/spacex-says-it-remains-on-track-to-return-to-flight-by-years-end/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know of any good reading on the type of insurance policy SpaceX might have for their launches? Or what type of entity would insure it?

<comment><USER3> At little old (2002) but just what you are looking for: [https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/q42002.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "issues with handling helium, rather than a design issue with the rocket itself"

I don't know if I would be so quick to declare "rather", but it would mean that they can baby the helium tanks to avoid any design issues for now.

<comment><USER5> Depends on how you define things. The fact that a gas car will have issues with very cold fuel or fuel outside an octane rating range is not a design flaw. But it is a thing you need to know.

You could say they learned something new about the rocket's exact "needs" and performance envelope, but you could also say that this sensitivity is something that should call for a design rev. Answer is likely yes and yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could this explain the loud bang we heard before the rocket exploded?

<comment><USER7> Boeing sniper nearby, possibly Illuminati.

The solution involves Kevlar armor around all the fuel tanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So was it thermal shock?

<comment><USER9> Formation of oxygen ice crystals around carbon fibers of helium tank, rupturing fibers.

<comment><USER10> I don't follow /r/spacex so I found this to be a great summary. A little more detail (without going to /r/spacex and wading through threads there) is in a comment (which itself is summarizing theories from /r/spacex) at ars:

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/spacex-says-it- remain...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/spacex-says-it-remains-on- track-to-return-to-flight-by-years-end/?comments=1&post=32154037)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is what seems to matter most... _Company still needs to find "exact" root cause, but ready to resume rocket tests._

They need to figure that out, and they need to do it before they lose another payload on the pad.</comment>


Why are wealthy cities seeing a surge of the down and out? - <AUTHOR> https://www.weeklystandard.com/ethan-epstein/homeless-in-seattle <comment><USER2> Because poor cities with no slack in the budget are sending them there?</comment>