Trampolines in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.com/2013/03/28/trampolines-in-javascript.html?utm_content=bufferdab4c&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer <comment><USER3> Genuine question, and this seems to be as good a place as any to ask it. I understand the concepts behind functional programming, and trying to implement them in JavaScript (recently read _Functional JavaScript_ too).

But from my experience, functional programming is mainly useful for parallelization/distribution of computation, because it's essentially mathematical -- functional code tends to be harder to write, understand, and debug, but you do it when you need to be able to split up computation. Kind of like assembly is harder than C++, but you do it when you need 100% optimized computation in a section of your program.

But because there is obviously no multithreading in JavaScript, I've never found a compelling reason to use the FP paradigm in JavaScript. Can anyone enlighten me as to real-world situations where FP makes sense in JavaScript, either client- or server-side? Particularly in web-based projects, which is obviously what JS is for?

<comment><USER4> Small steps. Just using some simple functional constructs like `map` and `filter` will do wonders for your code. You don't have to start writing everything in a purely functional manner to benefit from it.

<comment><USER3> Oh, for sure -- I use map/filter/reduce/etc. whenever I can when they result in cleaner/shorter code. They're great.

I'm asking more about things like tail-call recursion/trampolining, function decoration -- making the "architecture" of your program more functional, rather than just a few lines here or there.

<comment><USER5> Recursion isn't really hard once you get used to it, and often leads to shorter/cleaner code. Map/filter/reduce are themselves very clearly expressed using recursion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Did you know that "bookkeeping" is the only word in the English language containing three consecutive letter pairs? You're welcome._

Huh. Seems that's pretty much true. Occasionally people don't hyphenate _sweettoothed_.

        grep '\(.\)\1\(.\)\2\(.\)\3' word_list

<comment><USER7> I always thought the Encyclopedia Brown case whose solution hinged on the villain's not knowing that was far-fetched.

[http://brownencyclopedia.tumblr.com/post/33647027942/the- cas...](http://brownencyclopedia.tumblr.com/post/33647027942/the-case-of-the- hard-luck-boy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting article. But then, frankly, if you're ever in the need for that kind of things, why don't you make yourself a favor and stop using javascript (especially on the server, where there are plenty other alternatives) ?

I mean, if someone comes to me with some server code running a "trampoline" library so that he can perform tail-call optimization in javascript on node.js , he really better have some extremely good justification.

<comment><USER9> definitely true... If you're doing CPU intensive stuff in node, you should consider the following... worker script(s) (generic-pool helps too), with .fork(), refactoring the loop to use an async response with setImmediate, or converting to a binary module.

Example: [https://github.com/tracker1/node-js- scrypt/blob/master/lib/s...](https://github.com/tracker1/node-js- scrypt/blob/master/lib/scrypt-async.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trampolines are okay, but JavaScript still needs an actual TCO. In this blog post [http://taylodl.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/functional- javascrip...](http://taylodl.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/functional-javascript- tail-call-optimization-and-trampolines/) I look into the performance of trampolines compared to the normal recursive form. Trampolines perform worse. Moreover, TCO was invented to overcome the performance issues associated with recursive implementations, meaning trampolines perform much worse than TCO.

</comment><comment><USER11> i've never been much of a fan of this 'fancy new terminology' and generally learn it as needed...

however, there are two things i find scary here - and really both are the same thing

\- the idea that a stack frame is something that is not known about \- that solving the endless stack frame problem requires tail-call elimination or any other specific optimisation that leaves the code in recursive form

this reminds me of this section in the Michael Abrash programming black book - [http://www.phatcode.net/res/224/files/html/ch59/59-04.html#H...](http://www.phatcode.net/res/224/files/html/ch59/59-04.html#Heading8)

i was shocked at that as well tbh. unrolling that particular recursion by understanding how functions work is something i just did once without any special thought many years before encountering this book... i assumed that programmers generally understand how to implement everything they use, or at least have a deep curiosity about that - but this is a flawed assumption.

now, re writing recursive code to be iterative is something that i know from experience that programmers will shy away from until they get to grips with it. like many tasks it turns out that its both quick and easy and infact always possible, however before learning this they will worry it will be difficult or will take days. its such an easy task a dumb old computer can do it when it compiles your code after all... a human brain should have no problem (!)

if you implement your own stack based iterative method the equivalent to tail- call optimisation falls out naturally without needing to change the inner loop whatsoever (you literally end up writing code like c=a a=b c=a and realise you can omit a) the result is nothing nearly as complicated or expensive as trampolining - although it is a bit unreadable by my standards - <USER2> trampolining as this article suggests is just as messy or worse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here is an example of trampolining in a Scheme interpreter I wrote in JavaScript: [https://github.com/erjiang/foxscheme/blob/master/src/system/...](https://github.com/erjiang/foxscheme/blob/master/src/system/interpreter.js#L241)

This way, interesting Scheme programs can be written without using the small JavaScript stack.

It uses an infinite loop that's broken out of by throwing an exception. There are also some other tricks that it uses to allow other things to happen on the page while it runs your program.

<comment><USER13> Looks like Friedman taught you well. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Creating a new function for every tail call seems a bit awful. It's a shame that the more performant alternatives are ridiculously ugly.

<comment><USER15> Right, plus how is someone supposed to come in, look at the resulting code, and figure out how it works? Functions wrapped in functions wrapped in functions. (Remember, this is supposed to be the "ridiculously simple" case.)

On the other hand, we do a lot of wrapping things in functions in JS-land, so this probably says more about the state of the art than anything.

<comment><USER16> A trampolined state machine reads OK, where each state is the next transition function.

But generally, you want tail recursion...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hopefully this will be a bit less painful if/when TCO makes its way into ECMAScipt 6 ("Harmony") as it is slated to do: [http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:proper_tail_c...](http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:proper_tail_calls)

Regardless, this was an excellent introduction to trampolining.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sidenote: when you run the recursive function factorial(1000), Node.js returns "Infinity".

<comment><USER19> Because javascript has only one numerical type: double float?

<comment><USER20> > fact(1000) Infinity > fact(10000000) RangeError: Maximum call stack size > exceeded

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This works even better with ES6 generators: [https://github.com/pixelspark/dispatch.js](https://github.com/pixelspark/dispatch.js)

<comment><USER22> Doesn't ES6 have tail calls anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23>
        we need space On for all those stack frames

Why not use the normal O(n) notation?

</comment><comment><USER24> You don't seem to be gaining much from this, at least in JavaScript. The Jatha small LISP library that hasn't been updated since 2007 returns factorial(32768) in 5 seconds on a middling machine. (Disclosure: I'm the author of Jatha)

</comment><comment><USER25> jQuery script to fix that whole article: $("body").html($("body").html().replace(/rampol/g, "rambapol"));

Happy Friday Everyone!

</comment><comment><USER26> Very interesting and a nice hack. However, since you are already using a while loop, you might as well do this:

      function factorial(n) {
          for (var res = 1; n > 0; n--) {
              res *= n;
          }

          return res;
      }

Simple, shorter, no overhead from function calls, etc.

<comment><USER27> You know, this is the canonical programmer missing the forest by arguing the shape of the leaf on a tree. The point is to discuss the mechanism, and factorial happens to be a ridiculously simple example.

Perhaps what the article needs is a disclaimer such as:

 _We can easily rewrite this in iterative style, but there are other functions that aren't so amenable to rewriting and using a simple example allows us to concentrate on the mechanism rather than the "domain."_

;-)

<comment><USER26> Exactly. My point is that the factorial function is always used as an example when discussing tail call optimization and TCO is useless for it. I get how this is useful. I just would love to see an example of actually using it for something other than calculating factorials.

<comment><USER28> I understand this sentiment, but what simple zero-context function would you choose in place of factorial? You'd want something that's trivially and naturally recursive that doesn't also act on non-primitive types (to avoid having to do a bunch of blahblah introducing the particulars of a given data structure).

<comment><USER26> How about merge sort or quicksort? Or maybe a binary search? Seems a little more real-worldy. I suppose factorial is a good starting point to illustrate how to construct the function, but an example or two of an actual use case would be so so great.

<comment><USER29> "merge sort or quicksort? Or maybe a binary search?"

OK, but couldn't you then _still_ complain that each of those are "Simple, shorter, no overhead from function calls, etc." as while loops?

<comment><USER26> You might. The problem with doing a binary search in a while loop is that now you have to actually maintain your own stack, which to me seems like it should be left to the runtime. The point of using a recursion is that you can do the same thing as a loop but with less code.

Mostly, the problem is that no developer in the last 10 years has ever had to write an efficient factorial function except in a job interview or for a blog post. That is slightly less the case with sorts and searches.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AMD is dominating Intel in Amazon's best-selling CPUs list - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/82962-amd-dominating-intel-amazon-best-selling-cpu-list.html <comment><USER3> Better performance [2] with less cores, much better pricing, and the kicker for me is PCI Express 4.0 [1]. Intel doesn't even support the newest generation of NVMe storage. So yeah, AMD is dominating for a good reason- for now anyways.

[1] [https://www.pcworld.com/article/3400176/pcie-40-everything-y...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3400176/pcie-40-everything- you-need-to-know-specs-compatibility.html)

[2] [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html)

<comment><USER4> I think you mean "with more cores", not less.

<comment><USER5> AMD has more cores available, but also AMD's cheaper 16-core beats Intel's 18-core in many tests.

<comment><USER6> There's this really fascinating paper about how AMD has made Intel to innovate more and that AMD itself has found cheaper ways to stay on the CPU quality frontier:

[https://www.its.caltech.edu/~mshum/gradio/papers/GoettlerGor...](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~mshum/gradio/papers/GoettlerGordon2011.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I have to correct myself: with the presence of AMD, Intel has been innovating less than it would if the market were a monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're also making headway into the data center space. AWS has recently announced that compute dense instances will have an AMD powered version. They already have AMD offerings for GP and RAM dense instances.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd- powere...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powered- compute-optimized-ec2-instances-c5a-c5ad/)

<comment><USER8> GCP and Azure are offering AMD Epyc Rome based instances as well. Intel is losing their death grip on the data center space quickly.

[https://cloudblog.withgoogle.com/products/compute/amd- epyc-p...](https://cloudblog.withgoogle.com/products/compute/amd-epyc- processors-come-to-google-and-to-google-cloud/amp/)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd- ep...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based- azure-virtual-machines/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I look at the AMD stock price it seems like when Lisa Su took over AMD in 2014 she brought it back from the dead (and made a 10x valuation in 5 years).

Here's a relatively fresh iterview with her if others are interested as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amBe2bofVas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amBe2bofVas)

<comment><USER10> I'd give far more credit to Jim Keller, who returned in 2012 and designed Zen. AMD also benefited from Intel stumbling on 10nm and TSMC leapfrogging them. Zen 2 wouldn't be nearly as compelling if it was stuck on Global Foundries 14/12nm process (which is actually licensed from Samsung).

To AMD's credit though, they've executed very well - Jim left in 2015 with more than several Zen generations designed, but there has obviously been significant effort by far more people than just the project lead.

<comment><USER11> Zen was not designed by Keller. He had his hand on Zen 2, and in a role more of a project manager/team lead than a chief architect

<comment><USER12> Are you certain? [https://www.anandtech.com/show/9643/jim-keller-leaves- amd](https://www.anandtech.com/show/9643/jim-keller-leaves-amd) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOTFE7sJY-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOTFE7sJY-Q) (along with everything else I've seen) indicate otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article ought to have acknowledged the numbers for whole PC sales, which paint a different picture:

8/10 of Amazon's best selling laptops are Intel: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/565108/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/565108/)

9/10 for desktop PCs: [https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics- Desktop-Comp...](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Desktop- Computers/zgbs/electronics/565098/)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's really fascinating to watch them capture market share as you see where Intel is still entrenched for all kinds of reasons which are not price/perf wise.

For example, we can't use AWS t3a instances with EPYC Cores as our Management Provider has all their images only compiled for, optimized and tested on Intel based VMs.

The difference is still not large enough to bother to look into it, but next generation I expect the difference will be so large they can't ignore it.

<comment><USER15> Another couple of differences: No support for rr because of some lack of performance counters[1]. I also found that lm-sensors can barely see my AMD Ryzen at all, missing all core temp information. I'm hoping that both of these will be fixed since it doesn't seem that AMD is missing anything intrinsicly.

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034](https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034)

<comment><USER16> > I also found that lm-sensors can barely see my AMD Ryzen at all, missing all > core temp information.

This is fixed in Kernel 5.4, and some distros backported the fix to 5.3.

I'm using Debian stable, with a kernel from buster-backports, and I can see the temperature for my CPU (Ryzen 7) and the GPU (Radeon RX 580).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting for sure, but the market for people that buy a CPU chip as a standalone item probably doesn't relate much to the overall market.

I am rooting for AMD though. Competition was sorely needed.

<comment><USER18> > Interesting for sure, but the market for people that buy a CPU chip as a > standalone item probably doesn't relate much to the overall market.

The question then becomes how much the 'overall market' relates to profits. These manufacturers have consistently marketed to the enthusiast/home builder end of the market for decades now; they've never seriously neglected it. I suspect these sales are highly lucrative despite the relatively small volume. It astonishes me that one can mail order a 4096 pin device (sTRX4) and install it by hand in the kitchen, yet here we are, and it's been that way for a rather long time now. If it wasn't profitable the manufacturers would have stop feeding this market long ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Meanwhile Intel is still the only good option for laptops and I haven't used a desktop for 5+ years. Not saying this to bring down Intel success just wondering how much volume is in desktop vs laptop and hoping AMD can transition here as well.

<comment><USER20> Some supermarket ads in the mail last month showed 3 laptops, 1 very low end atom x5 "skype machine" and 2 amd zen based medium class.

I think zen will make a lot of sense for the majority of people. price/perf will reign over intel potential hedt products. If you give a 4 core + good gpu to the average joe for half the price of an intel he'll probably never look back.

<comment><USER21> AMD has always been better at price/performance but in the laptop space the number 1 through 10 most important features are efficiency. Intel CPUs use less power and make less heat, which has always been the limiting factor.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that is true anymore. AMD has a process advantage and measures their heat by the max clock rate, while Intel calls their max clock rate 'core boost' and measures their TDP with lower clocks. You can see benchmarks of the newest CPUs have Intel's high end chip that was just released ending up consuming about 100 more watts under heavy CPU loads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know AMD's resurgence is old news by now, but it's still impressive to look at Amazon's CPU best sellers and see them holding the entire top 10. The first Intel product is the i7-9700K at #12.

[https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories- Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Computer-CPU- Processors/zgbs/pc/229189)

</comment><comment><USER24> AMD is blowing Intel out of the water with the latest benchmarks. Intel's lone remaining advantage is its MKL performance in single-threaded performance (and they've done some shady handicapping of AMD CPUs to get there), but in multiprocessing and most ML workflows AMD is the clear winner. The ThreadRipper series is an amazing product.

<comment><USER25> I would say that AMD should make their own mkl if they want to compete. It's fine that it runs on AMD, but it is, after all, a closed-source library made by Intel.

At some point amd needs to take the software side seriously. Same goes for GPU.

<comment><USER26> What about OpenBLAS?

<comment><USER25> Openblas is significantly slower than mkl for most things, and doesn't have all the same features (only the blas part). It's also not developed by AMD. I think they need to take their software more seriously in general, since the best hardware doesn't matter with poor libraries.

<comment><USER27> FWIW: AMD offers this: [https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/blas- library/](https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/blas-library/)

The source code is available on GitHub.

<comment><USER25> I think AMD needs to take a page from Nvidia and really get their software together. The CPU and GPU libraries are a mess. There are multiple versions of libraries where in some cases both are maintained and it's not clear which to use, and in others, one is dead but may perform better than the new one. Intel and Nvidia let you download a single package for all scientific computing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's a last generation processor...their current generation is much more impressive. Twice as powerful than anything Intel has to offer at the SAME price as Intel.

<comment><USER29> Can anything beat the price/performance of the 2700x for $160 though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> from a developer point of view, AMD does not support record/replay debugging execution

<comment><USER31> Changing that is a work in progress: [https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034](https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034)

<comment><USER32> Is it? Based on the comments, the situation looks like "it doesn't work and nobody has figured out how to make it work."

<comment><USER33> Yeah, no one is clearly saying "we won't work on this and if you do, we won't accept a pull request" but instead "we currently don't know how to do it", meaning that if they figure out a way to do it, it'll happen at one point, either from 3rd party or themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it worth buying a Macbook Pro 16", or is Intel going to react with far better CPUs in the forthcoming months, including for laptops?

</comment><comment><USER35> Not a surprise. AMD offers better CPUs at better prices.

</comment><comment><USER36> My TR3960X came in today, the TR3990X is on order :-). Since my current chassis isn't configured for liquid cooling I went with an air cooling solution and it is freakishly large, seriously.

<comment><USER37> > My TR3960X came in today

From where?!? All I can find is B&H Photo with a pre-order estimating a month wait.

<comment><USER36> A shop in the Bay Area called "Central Computers." Once ASUS announced their TR40 motherboard I told him I wanted that, 64GB of RAM, and a 3960 or 3970 when they came in. He called me Friday morning and said, "ok we have it". Since by that time the 3990 had been announced as well I told him to put me down for one of those when they got them as well to replace the 3960.

<comment><USER37> Huh, lucky. Apparently no one's got them online yet.

Just hoping I don't have to wait as long as I did for my last CPU - <USER2> i7-6700k. It was quite a few weeks after "release" before I could actually buy one.

I'll probably stick with 32GB of RAM for now - I don't run a lot of VM's or anything - but I'm going to try an Intel Optane as a main SSD drive this time. Thinking about the Aorus Master sTRX40 since I'm a bit partial to Gigabyte for motherboards. These TRX40 boards are not cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Now I want all these AMD CPU innovations to apply to Laptop processors too. Most computers sold nowadays are laptops.

I am writing this from a Ryzen 5 laptop that's not really faster than the i5 laptop it replaced. If any, it is a bit slower, even with double the cores.

The Radeon GPU on the other hand is way ahead of the previous integrated Intel GPU.

<comment><USER39> Got me curious. What laptop model?

I'm in the market for a new laptop.

<comment><USER38> Mine is a Dell Inspiron 13 7375 2-in-1, and it has a Ryzen 2500U APU. It is a year old this month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817116)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wish apple started providing an amd macbook.

<comment><USER42> Right now AMD mobile chips are still less power efficient than Intel's.

<comment><USER43> A little, but it's not that bad, especially since AMD's iGPU is way better. The 7nm mobile CPUs that are likely coming next year should fix that.

That being said, I specifically sought out an AMD laptop because I want 4 cores and a better GPU without a dedicated GPU (battery and simplicity under Linux). I get enough battery life for now (~5 hours I think) on my ThinkPad E495, and if I need more, I'll get a USB power bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how much of this is due to brain drain due to political immigration policies.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is great news for competition, same goes for GPU where Nvidia is still a monopoly

<comment><USER46> When we consider deep learning practitioners and others relying on CUDA then yes, nvidia still has monopoly. But for gamers AMD's Radeon GPU is a compelling alternative.

<comment><USER47> For anyone on Linux it's also a better choice with Radeon, since they're actually cooperating with writing a FOSS driver for their cards. With nVidia you're stuck with a less than stellar third party FOSS driver or using nVidia's own proprietary driver.

<comment><USER48> I think it's important that we support hardware vendors that cooperate with free software development, by buying their products - and punish those who don't, by not buying their products. Otherwise we can't complain.

<comment><USER47> Yep, voting with your wallet is the only direct action you can take in this world that will actually have an effect on corporations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neofonie WePad has potential to be strong Android competitor to Apple iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.straight.com/article-299076/vancouver/neofonie-wepad-has-potential-be-strong-android-competitor-apple-ipad

<comment><USER2> uses the Android OS and an Intel Atom... yet another testing target for developers - should be fun with native code.

<comment><USER3> You don't actually do Android development, do you?

<comment><USER2> Tried a little, not going to go back (place where I am is going to stick with Blackberry / iPhone). I am more concerned with the Android NDK, testing on both ARM and now Intel seems sane. Simulators are not good enough.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle an impersonator? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I work at a non-tech startup (financial services industry, not evil), and we're having trouble with someone trying to use our firm's name for their own ends.
We first found out about this through one of our founder's friends who was based in the UK branch of a major bank. He told us that instructions had been given out to ignore emails and calls claiming to be from my company. Till date we have never spoken with them, but they are a long term target we hope to convert.
We've seen internal emails discussing the issue, and it seems this individual had called multiple times to obtain phone numbers and names of people in the department. Bizarrely, he tried to impersonate the Financial Times and our firm in the span of ten minutes. Fortunately his voice was identified and the bank sent out an email letting people know he was a phony.
We suspect that he was part of some sort of unscrupulous recruitment agency, since he was primarily focused on getting names of people to talk to. We figured it was best to let the issue slide. A key fact though, was that the faker knew that we were active in country A, and at one point said that he was based out of Country A.
Now a few weeks later, we found an account on LinkedIn trying to masquerade as a Director of our firm. The account is based out of Country A, and I suspect that it is the same idiot trying to run another scam. I've spoken to LinkedIn and I am getting his account flagged, hopefully I can prevent some of the damage he may end up doing.
It is particularly painful for my company - our reputation and brand is one of the most important assets we are building up, as the industry really values trust and security when dealing with its vendors.
We are worried that a reputation we have spent 4 years building up is being damaged by some dead beat, who we cannot figure out how to get a hold of.
Has anyone faced something similar? If so, how did you handle it? Any advice or suggestions are welcome.
PS: Please excuse my word and sentence usage, I will try and clarify as much as I can. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or input! <comment><USER2> The first order of battle would be to figure out who this is.

Once you've done that and it turns out you are in the same jurisdiction or one where you think justice will be done you could have a lawyer draft a nice C&D and send it off to him by registered mail. It's all fun & games until the doorbell rings.

If the impersonator is abroad and in a jurisdiction where he won't be bothered likely the harm they can do is limited.

If he is near you and he does not stop then the next step would be to sue him for trademark breach and anything else that you think will stick.

What I'm wondering about is what he is trying to achieve, have you figure that out? Is he trying to damage you, steal your customers, defraud someone?

Knowing the perps goal will go a long way in to figuring out a strategy to deal with him.

<comment><AUTHOR> A C&D sounds like exactly what I would like to send him, along with a few other things.

Regarding his motives - at this point I am leaning strongly towards Greyhat recruiting, but this guy seems to be doing moronic things, which complicates analysis.

Case in point: He went ahead and spoke to the head of the department to ask for names of people he could contact. Now a shakedown of this nature is best started from the bottom - targeting people who don't have experience and can possibly get bullied. Talking to the HoD is hubris/stupidity or the desire to malign us. We can't be completely sure what.

We were concerned that this guy was trying to ruin our rep. Fortunately since we have evidence that he tried to represent the Financial Times as well, it suggests that he was being opportunistic in choosing us.

It is possible that he may be trying to defraud someone - an outcome we had not considered.That would be something we need to find out.

I think the next steps will have to be talking to the original bank he targeted, and seeing if we can find some way to help them, and get more info on this person. Perhaps that will give us a lead and we can find him from there.

What concerns me is that there is little I can do to prevent this stuff, aside from dedicating someone to figure out every possible place our name can come up and making sure that those locations are searched regularly.

<comment><USER2> Here is a google search that will turn up some useful reading material:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=corporate+identity+th...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=corporate+identity+theft)

I wish you best of luck with this, it's a complicated issue and the authorities are not set up to take care of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like it could be part of some sort of spear-phishing or other social engineering.

If I was going to phone up people I didn't know and lie to them to get them to tell me privileged information, I'd definitely pretend to be from a real company, and I'd choose one that would have a real reason to be contacting them.

The fact that they were only looking for peoples names and numbers points towards this even more tbh. Working their way up the chain of command and all that. Let the police know in any event, so you have a trail of deniability if things turn nasty at a later date.

Or they could just be dodgy recruiters. Greyhat recruiting is pretty much social engineering anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need to get his address and have a lawyer send a very sharply worded letter that lets him know that he's in your gunsights. Don't write this letter yourself, or if you do, have a lawyer check it over before you send it. There are laws against making threats (even against someone who might be breaking the law).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be inclined to try to find a tech-savvy private investigator (no idea how) to track them down. These guys have backchannel contacts with law enforcement and can find out things that you may not be able to on your own.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're in America, I may be able to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your offer;sadly we're a bit further afield.</comment></comment>


The weird, counter-intuitive science of traffic jams - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/24/heres-how-self-driving-cars-could-clear-up-traffic-jams/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER3> _One study that tracked drivers in Boston during rush hour found that if you could remove just 1 percent of people on the road (say, to mass transit), you could achieve a whopping 18 percent improvement in traffic flow. But for whatever reason, cities haven 't figured out how to do that just yet._

If you don't think in static terms, this is obvious. Across any segment of time, some fraction of commuters will change their habits based on their expectations of time/cost/comfort. Some commuters can respond daily if, for example, they have a car and affordable parking at their destination as well as access to public transit. Other commuters may not have a car at all but will eventually buy one if it begins to offer substantial advantages over its cost. The point is that the system is dynamic.

And if, magically, the City of Boston could wave a wand and redirect 1% of its commuters to the subway, they'd soon discover that the 18% improvement in traffic flow has tempted many other commuters back onto the roads, and the benefit vanishes.

<comment><USER4> People don't want to move to mass transit because it sucks. During rush hour it only takes me 25 minutes to drive to work. If I took the bus it takes 2 hours. You will never get me to give up my car with times like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "people in convertibles are less likely to honk"

I think that there should be a law that a car's horn should be as loud inside the car as it is outside. That's how loud it is for nearby cyclists & pedestrians -- drivers would be much more likely to use their horn only when it's really needed if it was as loud for them as it is for others.

<comment><USER6> Meh, horns are a form of communication. Nobody honks a horn just for the hell of it. Sometimes you just gotta make others aware of the situation.

<comment><USER5> Of course they have a reason to honk. I just want it to be a good reason. My pet peeve is people who honk their horns rather than ring somebody's doorbell because they're too lazy to get out of their car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A large component of driving around in cars, at least for many, many people in north america, is not just for the purposes of transportation but simultaneously for displaying an expression of your personality. Many people buy particular cars because they view them as an expression of their personality (or an expression of their aspirations). Sure, this may be the "fault" of the car industry ... but whatever the origin, the fact is that it is the case today.

What's more I think that the manner in which many people drive is also an expression of their personality. Sure, some people buy a toyota tercel and drive around in a machine-like state, purely for the purpose of transportation ... but I think the majority of people drive in a more "personalized" manner, for lack of a better term.

I'm sure it's the case that google-self-driving-cars will be more efficient (and safer) transportation devices ... but the challenge will be that the masses will not easily migrate away from their personality-extensions (mustang, bmw, cadillac, convertible, truck, etc) into a pod-like utilitarian mode of transportation.

No doubt, one reason why traffic is so inefficient is precisely because of these "personality" effects ... but there is much in life that is inefficient. In an age of google (and others) identifying the "inefficiencies" in our daily lives, we need to have a discussion about what features of our behaviour, and our daily lives, define us as individuals and make us human.

Of course if part of your "personality" involves driving recklessly or putting people in danger, this is not a good state of affairs. But you get the gist of what I'm saying...

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, the same could be said about the phone... A major personality device.

Imagine the 80s exec on his office phone behind the leather desk.

The power player in the early 90s in a "CAR phone".

The suburbanite with the really long cord so he/she can use the phone anywhere in the living room/kitchen vicinity.

etc.

All of these were replaced by mobile phones which also become diversified as personality brands. The same will no doubt happen with self driven cars.

So let's look for what the equivalent of the pickup, mustang, or prius will be in the self-driven era.

My prediction: \- Mustang will be fast looking, but self-driven. With a manual option (for driving on a track some place) \- Pickup will be strong looking, but self-driven and with a manual mode expected to be used a lot \- Prius will be small and utilitarian looking, without much expectation to be manually driven

<comment><USER7> interesting. I suppose even if it's a dialed-down version, a company could easily provide self-driven cars that at least claimed to have different personalities. Maybe that will be in the form of non-functional "flair" (colours, decals, decorations, etc) but it has worked for many other products, that's for sure.

cool

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is fairly unimaginative.

First, when most vehicles are self-driving, you no longer need traffic lights or lanes. An urban street that is currently 2+2 lanes could be used as 4+1 in the morning and 1+4 in the evening if that is what traffic requires.

Second, self-driving vehicles remove a current disincentive to commuter microcars. A single person could easily get around in a car a third the size of a current subcompact if they didn't have to worry about being run over by land yachts. Beyond the lower cost, a half-lane vehicle could have a speed advantage in urban traffic.

<comment><USER10> Sure, if you have 100% self-driving vehicles with good vehicle-to-vehicle communications, you can even do intersections like this:

[http://vimeo.com/37751380](http://vimeo.com/37751380)

However, there's one further requirement for removing traffic lights and lanes and such: no pedestrians (try to imagine crossing the street in the above simulation). If you believe that cities should be designed for human beings, then this is a real problem.

So let's say you want to remove the traffic lights and create a high-speed continuous-flow system comprised of lightweight energy-efficient micro-cars. How could you make this compatible with human habitation? By removing the roads entirely, and running the vehicles on cheap segregated infrastructure, either below or above ground.

Sound fanciful? This technology already exists, and is much more mature than self-driving cars. It's called "Personal Rapid Transit" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit)), and has been prototyped successfully for decades. The first commercial system began operating in 2010, and there are now three PRT networks in public operation (The Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, Terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport, and a national park in Suncheon South Korea).

When it comes to self-driving cars, freeways / motorways will be relatively easy to automate, because they are already pedestrian-free continuous-flow environments. I expect to see vehicles available which can do that by the end of this decade, or possibly early next decade. Mixed-mode surface streets will be far more difficult, however, and while they are likely to become automated in the longer term, I suspect that this will only happen at very low speeds -- possibly as low as 10 km/hr, which is the speed at which humans and vehicles can interoperate in a truly safe manner.

<comment><USER11> > try to imagine crossing the street in the above simulation

Just start walking, the cars will steer around you! More seriously, there are already separate express and local routes for many major roads across the US, I don't think it has to be a radical departure from what is already there. Best part is, the way that self-driving cars are progressing to drive on regular roads, the infrastructure can grow more specialized for self-driving cars organically over time.

<comment><USER12> I will be intrigued to see the psychology of how that plays out, once people are comfortable with self-driving cars. Are we going to appreciate being in an intersection in which a care is approaching our side at 40 mph? Are people going to just charge out into traffic and trust the cars to reroute, if that turns out to be possible? (It may not be for various reasons, but let's run with it.)

<comment><USER13> Why would people have to run into traffic at all?

I'd say the easiest way to have streets with self driving cars and without traffic lights would be to build pedestrian overpasses. Just a nice small bridge to cross the roads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of traffic jams are the result of an improperly tuned car-accelerations and deceleration resulting in oscillations in the system.

Learn people how to drive properly and keep their distance and things will be better. A good indication is on how much fuel you used in the traffic jam. (Electric car excluded).

An auto-distance holder also helps to reduce the oscillation by 1 car, however correctly adjusting by hand is better.

[http://trafficwaves.org/](http://trafficwaves.org/)

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing this only applies to America. Where I'm from, traffic jams result from ~150-200% over utilization rates. Accidents just make that worse.

<comment><USER14> At my country it's also over-utilized, yet, you often see cars going slow, and then you do stop, for no reason, that can't be good for the little throughput you have left.

It won't fix it then, but it should help.

<comment><USER15> When your entire commute is stop and go, I don't see much hope in merely retraining the drivers. Self driving cars, on the other hand, can really optimize how limited capacity is utilized in developing countries like china (stuck in traffic right now in Beijing, which is way too normal here).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Merging at the last possible moment _increases_ congestion. If there is a lane elimination, after the the lane has been eliminated, traffic speeds up, because there is no remaining merging to complete. Thus, the earlier merging is completed, the sooner traffic can recover from the disruption. Also, spreading out the merges over a longer distance, versus everyone merging in the same spot allows traffic to recover from many small distributed disruptions instead of one centralized large disruption. Early merging = less traffic.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any proof for this, or is it just baseless conjecture? I suspect the latter, because nearly every link when you search for "traffic merging studies" states that late merging is more effective at reducing congestion.

From the Minnesota DOT: "Minnesota DOT engineers developed what they call a "zipper," which meshes cars quickly. Signs advise drivers of the upcoming lane closure, tell them to use both lanes up to a point and then direct them to take turns merging. When traffic is flowing, drivers merge early to avoid unsafe maneuvers. But when traffic is congested, motorists make full use of both lanes. The data revealed that the change reduced traffic lines by 35 percent and also brought down "lane changing conflicts," says Craig Mittelstadt, Minnesota DOT's work zone safety specialist."

From the Virginia DOT: "The late merge should be considered for 2-to-1 lane closure configurations to improve throughput when large numbers of heavy vehicles are present (>20 percent) for the majority of the time and congestion and queuing are often present."

<comment><USER16> "Do you have any proof for this, or is it just baseless conjecture?"

You mean, besides empirical evidence? Nope.

I see it almost every day on my commute, which is riddled with construction. On the days that everyone merges well before the last possible moment, traffic moves at a quicker pace, because there is no one to cut you off, and my commute is shorter. On days that people decide to cut others off at the last moment, my commute is measurably longer.

If you merge ahead of time, you are more likely to find an existing gap in traffic, which has little to no effect on the traffic's speed. Whereas, if you are merging at the last possible moment, you are necessitating a gap be created specifically for you, forcing others to slow down.

If cars stay in the eliminated lane until the last moment, and then the speed of traffic increases after the bottle neck, it was the merging at the last possible moment that caused the slow down in the first place.

<comment><USER18> And this is why traffic sucks -- because people prefer to rely on anecdote instead of hard scientific facts.

The behavior you are observing is not zipper merging -- it's people being assholes and trying to skip traffic.

If _everyone_ merged at the last second it would move better.

<comment><USER16> From Wikipedia: "Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, as evidence that cannot be investigated using the scientific method."

I didn't say "this one time back in 2001". This is everyday for years. These are consistently observable data. Cars merge early, my commute is under 30 minutes. Cars merge late, and not just one or two (the north shore of chicago is chock full of entitled assholes), my commute is over 40 minutes. Sounds like a falsifiable hypothesis to me.

One of the main reasons airplanes and trains are much safer than automobiles is that planes and trains have outside coordination of traffic, a third party who can see the bigger picture. Automobile traffic is thousands of individual actors who focus mainly on their own interests, and consider others around them only to avoid near term problems. Hoping everyone will magically act in concert, without government enforced obligation, is a pipe dream. Which is what the article points to, and proposes to solve with self driving cars. Self driving cars would allow the outside coordination that could facilitate zipper merging.

<comment><USER18> Your data is an anecdote because it isn't a repeatable environment with a proper control.

<comment><USER16> I'll have to try one that the next time I disagree with anyone about anything. And to think, I've been relying on logic and reason this whole time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My problem with self driving cars is not actually with self driving cars. I trust that our technology can reliably enable a vehicle to drive me around without my intervention. That's fine.

There are two things I do not trust: I do not trust that our technology can successfully and intelligently respond in the event of an traffic or roadway anomaly, the kind that usually causes car crashes i.e. damaged roads, debris falling off of cars, erratic drivers, etc. Although I do trust safety features, which are pretty nice lately, I would rather have not have a wreck.

Finally, I do not trust other drivers and I do not know how they will react/interact with a self driving car. It only takes one time for an idiot to flip out on the highway and cause a wreck.

When I feel that the self driving can adequately handle anomalies, wrecks, and suicidally bad drivers, then I will have no qualms with the self driving car. Till then, I'm not willing to bet my life that it works well enough.

<comment><USER20> What we need is a Robo-Indy 500. Companies with the latest tech in driverless cars compete, and the public sees how well (or poorly) the technology can deal with rapidly changing situations. Sure, you don't need to deal with peds or other urban obstacles, but it would go a long way towards assuring the public that driverless cars are safe.

<comment><USER21> Obstacles could also be incorporated into the race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Additionally, self driving cars would leave you free to read or surf the web during your commute. If you're relaxing and not driving, who cares if the commute takes a few more minutes...this would lead to a lot less lane changing, tail-gating, cutting people off, and many other causes of accidents and braking.

<comment><USER23> This is my main point when discussing self-driving cars. Every minute spent on a commute is essentially time wasted, if I could do whatever I wanted while driving I wouldn't mind an hour long commute.

The fact that we'd be distanced from the stress of driving, as you say, is also a great benefit, we're not really made for coping with the irritating nature of congested driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the real revolution will be in long haul trucking, self driving trucks would go a long way towards increased delivery speed and safety. Throw in a standardized communications protocol and they could be tapped by a variety of services to relay real time traffic information, road conditions, and whatnot. They could be tossed into HOV lanes if isolation in city limits is preferred.

As to the article, in Atlanta one major change that helped congestion was to implement throttled access via on ramps governed by lights. This tends to keep people from merging in groups which has a rubber band effect on existing traffic.

Still more can be done by restricting areas of the highway to limit the lane changes. In Chicago I saw this done with bypass areas separated by cement walls. A simple solution but a bit cumbersome. Still separating some outside lanes would help.

<comment><USER15> Traffic on an entire urban freeway can be synchronized if automated, leading to huge bandwidth increases. In America, you might say whatever, but in china this will be transformative since there is nowhere else to build new roads...and the authoritarian government can easily deal with those who still want to drive themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The two main ways self-driving cars could clear up traffic jams are:

* Far fewer cars needed — as more cars could be shared

* Far fewer parked cars — as cars needn't stay with the 'driver'

The two cases are linked: a car that doesn't have to wait around where the passengers are dropped off can return to base or can be away performing more lifts while the original passengers are busy.

Families would have need for fewer vehicles. Sharing a vehicle would make more sense.

If cars are busy during a drop-off-pick-up cycle there is no need for them to be clogging up the streets.

<comment><USER26> Cue traffic jam of cars with no drivers because they are trying to get to their next passenger/base.

<comment><USER25> While there may be more cars doing return journeys I suspect there will not be the same level of traffic jams as the cars return.

1\. Most outward trips would be chained: drop 1, drop 2, drop 3, return to base; rather than: drop 1, return to base, drop 2, return to base, drop 3, return to base. As would most return journeys.

2\. The roads would be clearer in cities due to fewer parked cars. In some cases there would be an extra lane now available.

3\. Cars could still have multiple bases, especially if they are shared. Car parks could be re-utilised as a stop-off points where empty cars could 'swap out' and remove themselves from the system briefly.

4\. Chains could be linked: do the early run, do the late run. Do the Smiths; do the Joneses.

5\. Empty cars with no urgent pick-up could wait for the roads to clear before embarking on a return journey.

6\. Would anyone care if a car returns to base slowly if there wasn't an urgent passenger waiting?

Cars could be more efficiently used and that would certainly imply that the fewer number of cars in existence would be being used for more trips throughout the day.

I admit that it will be hard to remove the rush-hour problem entirely without a significant amount of car-sharing. However with a fully self-driving system cars could do clever passenger shares (and/or mid-route swaps). Passengers would be free to only car-share within their sex / family / workplace / social networks etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> An interesting corollary: removing traffic lights in busy intersections might reduce accidents and improve traffic flow.

Some small pilot studies have been carried out in Europe, often with successful results. Basically, the idea is that we become more alert when a situation requires us to be. An intersection that appears riskier forces us to give it more conscious _and_ subconscious attention.

[http://knowledge.allianz.com/mobility/transportation_safety/...](http://knowledge.allianz.com/mobility/transportation_safety/?1841/risker- streets-reduce-accidents)

Anecdotally, I can certainly testify to the effects of traffic lights on traffic. I grew up and worked for a lot of my life in LA, a city as famous for its traffic as for its movies and weather. There are certain parts of the city in which every damned block has a traffic light, and blocks are very short in the denser areas. These areas are traffic hellholes. Beverly Hills in rush hour would have made a cameo appearance in Dante's _Inferno_ , had he been around to experience it.

<comment><USER28> Too many unsynched traffic lights in a grid formation often results in you sitting at a red light with no traffic moving in front of you, which is infuriating and inefficient. (Case in point, besides LA, is Toronto which seems to be designed this way on purpose.) This situation is alleviated by stop signs or traffic circles that give you the ability to advance when there is, in fact, no cross traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _— Cars tend to drive closer to bicyclists who are wearing helmets. That comes from Ian Walker, who set up a bicycle with sensors and drove around the city. Vehicles tend to crowd closer to him when he was wearing a helmet than when he wasn 't. That's not necessarily surprising, but it's a reminder of all the weird unconscious tics we adopt while driving and making on-the-fly assumptions._

This is a weird adaptation of the Peltzman effect[1], which found that people drove more recklessly when wearing seatbelts.

[1] [http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/07/peltzman- effect.html](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/07/peltzman-effect.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> i was slightly stunned that this is not common sense: "experiments show that humans are really bad at judging the speed of an oncoming train at a crossing until it's nearly arrived" if you've ever seen this at e.g a train station even, is painfully obvious that your perception of this is terrible - <USER2> in the distance look really slow.

level crossings have been very common here in the uk for a long time... open crossings are the exception rather than the rule, and you have to go far out of your way to find them.

</comment><comment><USER31> "— We're all basically idiots when it comes to merging."

We know.

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7_lwq3BfkY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7_lwq3BfkY)

</comment><comment><USER33> Can't wait for self driving cars. And the Hyperloop. And teleporters.</comment>


Did Anybody (actually) Read Getting Real? - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/04/did-anybody-read-getting-real_08.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone else get tired of "What are these people thinking?" comments? Or anyone with an "I have all the answers, everyone else must be crazy or a moron because christ look at what they're doing" attitude?

People use Ruby on Rails and still go after VC funding might just do so because _they need it_.

Or maybe not! Maybe they want some sort of prestige, or maybe they're scared, or maybe they just want the experience. Who cares?

There is such a loud din on the Internet about the right method to follow, or in this case the right "wheels" and the right "car". Most of these articles do not reference any real supporting research, but instead rely on the author's vague intuition. The author of this article, Giles Bowkett, is talking about people who haven't failed yet - so who's to say if their picking up a serial entrepreneur founder wasn't a wise decision?

My computer chair advice: use your own brain. Precisely identify the problems you need to solve and the questions you need to answer.

For example, one of my problems is that it's difficult for me to focus on side projects in my spare time while doing client work. To solve this problem I'll need seed funding so that I won't have to do client work while I work on the project I really want to do. Thus, I've applied to ycombinator (and have experienced 7 days of stomach churning apprehension hoping I'll be accepted). This doesn't make me illiterate, nor does it mean I have to go memorize Getting Real. It just means I'm relying on my own judgment.

<comment><USER3> No, it means you haven't saved up enough money. :-)

Good luck with getting YC funding. But there's a huge difference between YC and venture capital. When you start talking to venture capitalists, you'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "What are these people thinking? Why are they going to VCs for venture capital to write social networking sites in Ruby on Rails? __The whole point of Ruby on Rails is it gives you the ability to write applications without VC funding! That's what it was invented for! __"

<comment><USER4> I think it's an interesting point, but using Rails doesn't mean you have to structure your business like 37 Signals. I _did_ read Getting Real, but with a grain or two of salt. It had some really good points, but understanding their point and trying to emulate their business structure (as they suggest you should) are different things.

Busting your ass and forming a company with a larger growth potential is still an option. It makes things riskier, but some people are fine with that.

The point of this really should have been that you need to be cognizant of the type company you are creating, realistic about its chances for success and aware that VC funding is only a means to an end.

<comment><USER3> See, the problem that I think people are missing is that VC funding is no longer a means to an end.

Implicit in your comment is that a company without VC funding cannot grow as fast as a company with VC funding.

That was true ten years ago when a lot of costs were unavoidable: Server hardware ,server software, and you had to build a lot of software infrastructure from scratch.

Now all that is cheap, or free, and what isn't comes with lease terms.

Thus, lacking a big pile of money is not an inhibitor to growing big fast.

<comment><USER4> I never claimed VC funding is required for quick (or expansive growth). There are obvious examples where that's not the case.

I'm not sure how you can claim that VC funding is not a means to an end. There are clearly cases in which a lot of cash helps. Startups use money for many more things than servers.

If you're pursuing cash for equity for no reason and do not really need it, then yes of course that's a bad idea. If you're preemptively avoiding cash for equity without considering if it can help you get where you want to go, however, that's also a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> That's true, but I'm assuming that nobody here is working on a startup that's building medical devices, a manufacturing plant, or has a high government regulatory burden.

So, for your basic consumer oriented web startup, you don't need VC funding...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, agreed you get along without VC if you actually have a part-time job and which leaves you the necessary time to program on the side . It is also quite true that hardware and stuff are quite cheap by now.

Still, if you don't have any money and not a job then VC seems to be the only way on how to make a living and pay for all the expenses. There are lawyer fees for getting incorporated, trademark-fees, patent-fees and renting a scalable RoR server at JoyEnt costs also 125$ a month. We are now a team of three founders and work fulltime on our project. But programming is only half the things we have to do, we also have to think about the promotion of our product, things have to be designed, the userinterface gets tested a lot and we have to think about strategies how to make our service known. We will probably use GoogleAdWords, create a viral videospot etc. All these things cost money. And it would be really great to have an office where we could program instead of my 13 squaremeter room which leaves me nearly no privacy because when I go to bed someone is programming in my apartment and when I wake up someone else is already there.

Therefore I think that VC still covers a quite basic need of a startup, even if RoR is used and the founders have read Getting Real. Founding a company still costs money, although admittedly less than a few years ago. VC-companies investing in webprojects are not dead, but will have to adapt to the needs of founders and start investing smaller sums.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like this his post for several reasons. First I'm not the kind of guy who would like to build a business that is built-to-flip, built-to-be-acquired or any of the sort. Call me old school but I still believe that if we work hard enough at our business we can create something lasting and with value to the customer. I've read Getting Real and I too took it with a grain of salt. Granted they have good points in the form of building something customers want and not taking VC funding initially or never at all. THe point I'm driving it is I see alot of great ideas around the web for a business. But sadly I don't see what their economic engine is? nor do I think they have any idea, no sound business model, and little or no added value to the customer. Funny thing is I'm a hacker! just like most of you! I'm not a "business guy" nor will I ever want to be one. Either way I'm just trying to make sense out of all the noise I'm hearing.

-Mathew

</comment><comment><USER3> _cargo cult management strategy._

Spot on!

"The brand-building idea is all about casino thinking. The theory is, the minute you have a brand, you can cash out. This casino attitude is good for VCs but it's ruinous for programmers, and it's ruinous for normal investors as well. (And it isn't even really that good for VCs.)"

This guy knows what he's talking about.

Getting Real misses the mark in a few areas... the 37signals people are (I am guessing) from a design background and often end up implemting a solution that solves the problem the way they want to solve it, but not generally... and rails suffers because of this. Some other things in the book don't make sense... but it is an excellent book and well worth reading.

Venture Capital is dead. Its deader than microsoft.

<comment><USER2> "deader than microsoft" - that is great :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "And I'm like, well, how about a reasonable amount of money to work a reasonable amount of the time? And they're like, no. And then I was like, well, how about a tiny amount of money to work hardly ever? And they're like, no."

Alas, salary is rarely a linear function of the hours you work.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is no VC in 37sig? I think it is.

<comment><USER9> Jeff Bezos made an investment. They didn't need it, but just wanted to have access to Bezos from what I understand.

Here's their announcement:

<http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests_in_37signals.php></comment></comment>


Hacker Jobs UK is rolling out to Europe & the US - <AUTHOR> http://hackerjobs.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had enough interest from various companies in the US & Europe to launch regional versions of hackerjobs.co.uk so we've almost completed both iterations and you can use the link above to register your email to get notified when we launch.

Prior to the US & EU launch we'll be introducing a lot more features to the site which we'll trial and error on the UK version so it certainly won't be an MVP.

Wish us luck!</comment>


The Revival of Concorde - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/83904/concorde-flights-planned-to-resume-and-aircraft-proposed-for-display-in-london.html?curator=MediaREDEF <comment><USER2> For anyone with a few hours to spare geeking out about Concorde, I recommend this thread:

[http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde- question.html](http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.html)

It starts off slow with a technical question, but gradually pulls in some of the plane's designers (and even a flight attendant) discussing every aspect of the plane's design and operation. One of the most amazing aviation threads on the Internet.

<comment><USER3> It was fascinating to see the prototype drawings on the wing designs on this thread, plus many other design aspects of the Concorde. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Concorde is one of those early implementations that is just big enough to barely work, yet never really succeeds, while also sucking all the air out of the room for any other ideas. The aviation fan side of me would love to see the Concorde fly again but my gut says that trying to resurrect the Concorde will only delay any chance of regular supersonic flights in the future.

<comment><USER2> There's nothing about Concorde that ruined it for anyone else. The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved. The plane was a pretty remarkable piece of engineering given the physical constraints.

<comment><USER5> One more thing that shut down the Concorde was the post-9/11 increase in security procedures at airports, greatly diminshing the relative advantage of supersonic flights. If getting on the plane takes an extra (unpleasant) 45 minutes on each end, then the percentage time savings from supersonic flight is reduced.

<comment><USER6> Are post-9/11 security times really longer? Security screening actually seems pretty efficient (i.e. quick) to me. Even before 9/11 we had baggage x-ray and passenger metal detection. These measures were introduced in December 1972.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I have to opt-out every time I fly now which adds ~20-30 minutes to my visit to security.

<comment><USER8> Opt-out of what?

<comment><USER9> Presumably the millimeter wave body scanners, which are both invasive and relatively unstudied in its health effects.

<comment><USER10> Apparently millimeter wave radiation can be ionizing under the right circumstances. That's sort of terrifying.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294](http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294)

<comment><USER11> The paper you referred to doesn't make any claims with regards to ionization - the effects considered are mainly having to do with the molecular dynamics behaviors of DNA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With the increased number of ultra-rich these days, Concorde or another SST is probably more viable then ever. It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk. When I see a ferrari drive by I think "cool car" but I certainly would be against any and all tax breaks or special treatment to keep it on the road. Mounting a Concorde on a special platform in the middle of the London Tames seems like a cheap tourist trap.

<comment><USER13> _The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk._

Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

<comment><USER14> As far as international air travel, I've never seen a flight from the US to Europe for less than $1,000. That's a damn expensive airport meal.

Short-haul commuter flights are a different thing entirely.

<comment><USER15> Really? I routinely travel to US to Europe for between $600 and $800. Still not an airport meal but not that insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I flew Concorde right after it came back into service in late 2001, right after the crash. Highlights were feeling the heat on the windows and seeing the curvature of the Earth. Downsides were tight seats, and the fact that it didn't save that much time vs. a conventional jet. But, it was amazing, and I still wear my Concorde cufflinks. It still seems complete uneconomic.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's really weird to see a frequent fliers' club come together and open their wallets with the sort of dollar values normally seen at, say, alumni events for a major university, or perhaps a charity fundraiser for an ongoing natural disaster.

Then again, when one reads things like "A particularly extravagant excursion was a one-day visit to the pyramids in Cairo in 1982; priced at £780, it was marketed as the most expensive day trip in the world," and ponders the sort of mindset where "most expensive in the world" is considered a marketing point, F. Scott Fitzgerald does come to mind: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

</comment><comment><USER18> The French and the English built the Concorde in the late 60's and the French also built the HST known as "TGV" in the early 70's, a train that to this day (with newer iterations) holds speed records for a conventional train (proof that the initial design was excellent). After all this, people still like to joke about how the French are "not good engineers".

<comment><USER19> Well, usually people who are saying that are thinking about the everyday results of French engineering, like the electronics of Renaults and Citroens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting trivia: the maximum external dimension of the Concorde's fuselage is 3.32m, whereas the overall diameter of the GE90-115B, the engine used on some 777s, is 3.429m. It's a very narrow plane.

<comment><USER21> For another point of reference, the max cabin width of a Boeing 737 is 3.53m and the fuselage width is 3.76m[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications)

<comment><USER22> So you could fit a Concorde fuselage inside a 737? wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "To see the future, go to a museum and look at the Concord" \- Jeremy Clarkson

</comment><comment><USER24> > _the club is aiming to purchase a Concorde currently stationed near Orly > Airport in Paris_

Here it is on Street View: [https://email@example.com,2.3727748,3a,75y,274.5...](https://email@example.com,2.3727748,3a,75y,274.58h,85.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1mVqhC- jLCt-tdB-SaKOQA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

and here's a picture I took of it a year ago: [http://imgur.com/UtD294i](http://imgur.com/UtD294i)

It doesn't appear to be in great shape.

</comment><comment><USER25> A sign of our imminent extinction, no doubt. Let's double down on JP-4! Party like its 1989, or til the seas are flooding the runway!

</comment><comment><USER26> Supersonic commercial passenger travel is almost certainly dead for the foreseeable future. (Small supersonic bizjets are another issue entirely.) Here's why:

To start with, Concorde was a high-maintenance airframe, more like a military aircraft than an airliner. Each airliner averaged about a day of maintenance in the hangar per two hours of flight, so made one return trans-Atlantic crossing per week. It also burned roughly 100 tons of fuel shipping 100 passengers between NYC and London in 3h30m, compared to a 747 burning the same amount of fuel to ship 450 passengers between London and San Francisco; about 5-10x the fuel burn per passenger-mile.

But the reason it eventually tanked in the market ...

Suppose you're flying London-NYC, post-9/11\. You can queue up for security checks 2 hours before you take your seat, then either fly on a regular subsonic airliner or Concorde. After your flight you spend 1 hour getting through immigration and customs at JFK. Total time on security/queueing: about 3 hours. Total time in flight: 3h30m or 7h. So Concorde only cuts your _end- to-end_ travel time from 10h to 6h30m.

Note that a Concorde seat is a cramped, narrow coach-class seat. Okay, there's first-class food and drink and a buffet in the departure lounge: but it's still coach-class leg-room. Meanwhile, a first class seat on a 747 gets you a lie-flat bed along with your posh nosh ...

But if you have the money to fly Concorde, you have the money to pay for a seat on a private bizjet or a charter service like Netjets. It's still subsonic, but you by-pass the _entire_ check- in/security/boarding/immigration/customs mess. Just drive through a gate and up to your bizjet, board it, and it takes off _when you 're ready for it_, not vice versa. And on arrival, an immigration officer comes out to meet you and stamp your passport (if you pay extra -- part of the service). Travel time: 7h.

The takeaway is that the super-rich/first class jet-set passengers deserted Concorde because they could get the same travel time for the same money on private business jets, without being treated like cattle by the TSA.

Even if you could wave a magic wand and streamline the queueing/bureacracy for Concorde passengers, there remains the fact that if you re-started services tomorrow they'd only be able to manage one flight in each direction per day (if they had a fleet of six hulls magically preserved and ready to fly). Whereas the bizjet is ready to fly whenever the passenger wants it.

Upshot: mass supersonic jet travel is dead for the time being. A market _may_ exist for supersonic bizjets (and indeed Aerion claim to be bringing a Mach 1.5 bizjet to market within the next 5 years -- but someone or other has been saying some variation on this theme since about 1990). The only way we'll see supersonic passenger airliners the size of or larger than Concorde again is if we get a propulsion technology breakthrough that makes it feasible to run a scheduled daily-or-more-frequent service across distances that make it desirable -- LAX to Tokyo or Beijing, London to Sydney, and so on. Nuclear, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER27> Something called global warming? What I understood, this is quite a wasteful machine.

<comment><USER28> All manner of transportation and industry is contributing to global warming. Unfortunately, that is typically not an important factor in these kinds of decisions.</comment></comment>


3D Printing Vending Machine on the UC Berkeley Campus - <AUTHOR> http://www.3dreambox.com/

<comment><USER2> I pass by this machine all the time, so hopefully I can offer some insight:

* It's pretty much just a Makerbot in a enclosure. There is an Android tablet that you enter your information into which allows you to retrieve your object.

* The machine is surprisingly busy, even though a lot of people I talk to on campus don't know about it. I suppose that's one of the perks of having a lot of people in one area.

* It's great for people to make 3D models without the hassle of setting up and maintaining a printer of their own.

I'm curious to hear the metrics to see if it's in line with my casual observations.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a great minimum viable product!

Ignoring the fact that there's obviously going to need to be more breakthroughs in 3D printing before this can scale I think that this setup could shed some light on the demand for consumer 3D printing. A large spike in demand followed by a bunch of complaints about the user experience/wait time/build quality/etc could tell you which part of the printer process needs to be optimized first before this can gain widespread acceptance. Excited to follow this in the months to come.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great concept, but it's a bit ahead of it's time. We'll get there, but consumer-grade 3d printing is nowhere near unattended operation like this.

Stereolithography maybe, but additive 3d printing tech like the one shown in this video suffers from all sorts of issues requiring operator assistance - like the object unsticking from the build plate, and the head needing frequent cleaning. Unless this "vending machine" is manned, I doubt it could be useful/successful until technology improves.

<comment><USER5> Exactly true. Today's tools* require far too much maintenance & operator involvement to be fully automated like this.

Shapeways.com & Ponoko & others have "upload & print" (by mail) services, & they work well, since they have operators in their facility.

*But, things change fast. It might just be a few months or years before the machines can reliably produce without maintenance & operator steps. Is this it already? I'm curious & signed up & will give it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like this model. It makes a lot more sense to get people used to the technology without a huge upfront investment.

The biggest reason that I don't have a 3d printer is after the first week of making things, I have no idea what I would possibly use it for. Having a setup like this would be perfect as parts would still be rapid (compared to having them made & shipped) and it would save the large upfront expense.

Sure there may be some quality & operational issues to address, but that's fine.

A webcam might be useful for both the end user to watch his part being created and for the operator to remotely check for jams, clogs, messes, and other disasters.

<comment><USER2> I believe there is a webcam inside the machine that allows you to watch parts being made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Though I like the idea, I feel like this would work much better as a business if you had professional printers instead of (what appears to be) Makerbots in the vending machine. The fact that this is limited to small, one colour designs greatly lessens the appeal. Also, I am concerned that objects would break coming down that shoot mechanism.

<comment><USER8> So some back of the envelope calculations here...correct me if I misstep:

They average 5.70 per product. Assumption - 1 product per hour. Assumption - 20hrs/day (leaving time for adding more plastic and down time)

This totals about $114/day and at 7 days a week this would take approx. 16 days to pay for the box itself. Now include expense of filament (again, approx $20 per day for 20 pieces or so, this is a guess and highly depending on the product and I am assuming they took that into account) for a total of about 20 days of constant 20hr/day operation to pay for just the materials and printer. Now include the costs of creating a queuing system for procrastinators who don't pick up their stuff right away. And technician time to manage errors, refills, maintenance, etc. If you can get 250 people to buy a product this sounds like a decent idea.

Now just make sure neat things can be printed and you are a winner.

I may have to try this.

<comment><USER9> On this scale, it seems like the retail frontage space would be a non-trivial expense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This could be really cool, although as other people have said, achieving unattended operation seems like it will be challenging.

Does anybody know how the metal printing is supposed to work? Selective laser sintering machines that I've seen all seem way too big to fit in a vending machine.

<comment><USER11> We had one where I used to work. I wasn't responsible for it or anything, but I'd guess it's base was around 8ft by 4ft, and it stood about 6ft tall.

This one worked by depositing a thin layer of aluminum/magnesium powder over the working base. A laser would then fire, igniting the magnesium which would fuse together the aluminium. The laser draws the shape of that layer of the feature. When the layer is complete, the process repeats for the next layer.

The biggest thing I'd worry about is liability and cost of operation. Because their raw material mix is basically thermite, they have a not insignificant potential to explode during use. While removing parts, for instance, you need to worry about sparks igniting the airborne mixture creating a firebomb. The material is also quite hazardous to your lungs and eyes even when it's not aflame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems cool, but I was wondering: Why is it called "3D printing" machine and not "sculpting" machine?

<comment><USER13> "Scuplting" implies something being carved away from a block of larger source material. 3D printing builds an object by adding layers of material in the exact pattern of the object.

<comment><USER14> In trying to figure out what I was trying to say, I found the following on wikipedia: "Durable sculptural processes ... used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay) ... A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast."

It seems that building up the material could fall under sculpture, which is called "modelling."

Maybe we should call them 3D modellers instead of 3D printers. Except that "3D modellers" is kind of ambiguous. It sounds like a person who makes 3D models.</comment></comment></comment>


Six Degrees of Music Separation - <AUTHOR> http://www.whosampled.com/six-degrees/ <comment><AUTHOR> WhoSampled.com announced the launch of 'Six Degrees of Music Separation', a music discovery engine that enables users to connect any two artists in the musical universe through samples, cover songs, remixes, collaborations and credits.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would be more impressed if it had more artists. Every artist that I suspected would beat it (in the interest of fairness I only tried artists with 2+ albums) it didn't have.</comment>


Extreme Shepherding - Best Sheep Hack I've seen all day - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw this will blow your mind! <comment><USER2> Is this real? How can this be real? I sort of get how they did pong, but how did they do the walking sheep? How do your herd just one color of animal?

<comment><USER3> Time-lapse and editing, I think.</comment></comment>


Firefox 3 beta 2 Arrives with More Speed and Fewer Bugs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/12/firefox-3-beta.html

<comment><USER2> Think Flock already converted me.</comment>