NASA Declares End to Deep Impact Comet Mission - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130920-deep-impact-ends-comet-mission-nasa-jpl/

<comment><USER2> > "Basically, it was a Y2K problem, where some software didn't roll over the > calendar date correctly," said A'Hearn. The spacecraft's fault-protection > software (ironically enough) would have misread any date after August 11, > 2013, he said, triggering an endless series of computer reboots aboard Deep > Impact.

Men build a $267m spacecraft, send it to space, target it at a meteor, manage to make it inspect the meteor upclose at thousands of kms/hour... and still, writing correct software is an impenetrable problem.

Amazing.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, the problem was _date /time_ related. Dates and times seem to be one of the most tricky things to account for and are consistently taken for granted, introducing unexpected errors. You would think by now someone would have made a fortune developing a robust radiation tolerant datetime IC, that has enough bits to count milliseconds from the big bang until the estimated end of the universe.

<comment><USER4> As Peter van der Linden says in his (excellent) book Expert C Programming: "Anyone who thinks programming dates is easy to get right the first time probably hasn't done much of it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It had been retargeted, with its last couple kgs of fuel, to a potential year-2020 asteroid encounter:

[http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1112/17deepimpact/](http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1112/17deepimpact/)

</comment><comment> anon-140 Here is the latest SCLK kernel for the mission: [http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/DEEPIMPACT/kernels/sclk/DI...](http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/DEEPIMPACT/kernels/sclk/DIF_SCLKSCET.00121.tsc) and if you are not among the JPL/NAIF/SPICE cognoscenti and don't have the numbers sense to grok it from that file, here is one of the SPICE required reading files: [http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/C/req/sclk.ht...](http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/C/req/sclk.html) to get you started. SPICE is one of the most robust, well-commented and -documented toolkits I have ever seen. There is more information about the spacecraft clock in the PDS archives e.g. [http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/di-c- spice-6-v1.0...](http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/di-c- spice-6-v1.0/disp_1000/catalog/spiceds.cat)

</comment><comment><USER6> > "I'm a little biased, but I think the taxpayers saw very good value from > this mission,"

I'd say that was biased. I personally would have rather $267 million be spent on something more permanent and practical. How about spending it on our Earth- based telecopes?

<comment><USER7> Because pretty much everything that was possible to discover with earth based telescopes has been discovered. Sure, you can always do "science" with earth- based telescopes - reconfirming existing theories, making sure theoretical data matches up to real observed data, but there's a limit to how much "discovery" can actually be done.

Extra-planetary experiments like the deep impact mission allow scientists a glimpse at new experimental data that can confirm theories that there is no other way to confirm. Sure, you can observe a comet's tail to figure out its surface composition - but that has limited resolution and many elements simply can't be detected that way. This isn't even taking into consideration all the sub-surface elements that would be utterly impossible to detect from observation alone.

In essence, even if the Deep Impact mission mostly failed and scientists only gathered a limited amount of data, it is still very much worth its value when the alternative of building permanent terrestrial telescopes does nothing more than confirm data that has been confirmed countless times in the past.

<comment><USER8> > _even if the Deep Impact mission mostly failed and scientists only gathered > a limited amount of data_

I don't think you meant it that way, but I'd like to clarify that Deep Impact's mission most definitely did not fail. The spacecraft survived for eight years after it completed its primary objectives in 2005.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know more about the software? (Operating system, language, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER9> unbeliveable. whole world was alerted about the upcoming y2k doom and nothing particularly spectacular happened. but those guys managed to do it anyway. several yrs later.

<comment><USER10> The y2k mention was an analogy, not literally the same bug, because as you correctly stated it would be impossible to trip over the y2k bug several years after y2k. It was a calendaring bug.</comment></comment>


What is the best advice for a startup applying to Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-advice-for-a-startup-applying-to-Y-Combinator/answer/Harjeet-Taggar

<comment><USER2> Don't base your business on getting in. If it's a 'nice extra', I think that you're probably more likely to get in, and also will be less concerned if you don't.

<comment><USER3> Yes. You have to be a world-eating monster to build something viable and you can't be depending on help just because your brain connects YC with "success".

If we are more articulate about it, we will find some reason that its a 'nice extra'. YC gives you: \- No distractions of trying to make a living for 3 months \- Ridiculous amounts of connections for funding \- An environment full of smart, successful people who are professionals at giving feedback and being critical

Now we know why YC helps so much, at the absolute minimum, and we can reproduce it without YC if we don't get in. Thats the game.

<comment><USER4> _You have to be a world-eating monster to build something viable_

Ok, finally parsed this. This is a statement about determination. Now who's going make the Katamari theme stop playing in my head?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My advice, as someone applying, is to spend a lot of time reading and filling out the application. Iterate on it a lot. Print it out and hand it out to your families, or better, your professors. "Do you know what we are going to make from this?".

Assure that any demo links you have are direct and catered to YC looking at them. "Hi YC, this is our demo! Its as simple as possible but if it crashes or something here is a mockup : <http://dating-site-for-knife- lovers.co.us/mockup.png>.

Make sure your answer to "Describe some time you hacked a non-computer system..." is good. Think about that a lot on your off time (I think its the hardest and intriguing question I've ever been asked, and I think about it all of the time).

DO NOT BE A USED CAR SALESMEN on the application. Be a scientist.

Anyway: <http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html>

<comment><USER5> It's surprising how often people answer the question about having hacked some non-computer system by saying that they never have. This just can't be true. Our 2 year old already has 1001 tricks for getting what he wants.

<comment><USER6> But to say that you have hacked some non computer system, wouldn't it require you to have invented the hack?

Because as smart as your two year old is, he probably didn't invent the technics.

<comment><USER7> It's probably enough to have independently invented the techniques -- it's not like pg is going to stand up at the interview and yell that there was unpublished prior art in a Swahili book from 1902 explaining the same technique you came up with on your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        - Are they good people? This is harder to be
          specific/definite about and probably applies more to
          the interview stage but a common trait amongst YC
          founders is that they're always described as good
          people

How should one go about being _good people?_ I ask not because I have no clue, but because I'm curious about what others have to say. (Other than being less abrasive when someone on the Internet is wrong.)

<comment><USER5> I think what Harj means is not so much that you should become good as that if you are a good person, you shouldn't feel like you need to hide it because e.g. you think it would seem unprofessional.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but I can't figure out how to connect up the referents so that your comment makes sense to me.

I have no idea why someone would want to hide "being a good person" for any interpretation of _good_ subscribed to by people who exist outside of fiction.

As for becoming good: I think most people are basically good, but some have acquired pathological behaviors. And of course, it's not the business of someone hiring, a startup, or an incubator to do anything about that, except to exclude it. I think a lot of hackers are angry or at least have a chip on their shoulders because their lives and/or their livelihood lacks _efficacy_.

<comment><USER8> Someone might think "I'd be fine with losing a little revenue per user if it means users are happier with our product", but feel pressure to instead tell investors "We're not going to do that because it would mean less revenue per user".

Some people think it looks weak/naive/unprofessional to seem "good" in this way.

I'm not sure that's what YC is talking about though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> be young, kidless and have parents to sponsor your living expences :)

(or have steel stomach to live off of pizza)

<comment><USER10> My co-founder and I are approaching 30, married and my co-founder has 2 kids. We were in the W2010 YC group. Neither of us had anyone to "sponsor" our living expenses. Yes, we were at a disadvantage compared to younger founders when it came to cost of living, but now that StartFund is investing $150k into every YC company, that disadvantage is erased.

By the way, we were not the oldest founders in our round.

Furthermore, in my opinion, we also had a huge advantage over some of the younger guys -- applicable experience. Most of the younger guys had to stay inside a realm that was familiar to geeks (social media, technology, etc.) whereas we're able to attack a market that most young folks can't touch (old media, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, etc).

At times it has been hard on our marriages, but at the end of the day our spouses both see that we're living our dream and they're happy for us (plus, it probably doesn't hurt that we have a chance of being wealthy some day).

<comment><USER11> Approaching 30 is still young.

<comment><USER10> It's old enough to have the problems that someone older than 30 might have, for example: kids, a mortgage, health care, a retirement plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would look at the intensive application and rules as it would explain what's expected of you. But you should have something of what's expected of them too.

/IANAYC

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't apply. Real men make it on their own.

If you think 18k$ and a bunch of geeks running around is what your project needs to be successful, maybe its time to rethink your strategy.

<comment><USER10> Suit yourself, but Y-Combinator was a big help for us. I personally wouldn't place my startup at a disadvantage just to prove that I'm a "real man".</comment></comment>


Gravity Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.gravity.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm only a single data point, but you've lost me because I have no idea what gravity is upon first glance at the site and I don't want to watch a stupid animation of stick figures talking gibberish.

Make it really obvious what your site does or keep making inconsequential first impressions.

<comment><USER3> I didn't even get that far. I don't like watching videos on the Internet, mainly because I usually have other music playing, and they don't play so nice with linux. I don't want to have to stop everything I'm doing just to see what some - probably irrelevant - website is doing.

<comment><USER4> Get earcandy. It automatically fades music players once a flash video or a video player starts playing: <https://launchpad.net/earcandy>

Edit: regarding Gravity: I agree. While I do enjoy video's, because often they get the message across incredibly fast. This video doesn't. It's cute, but once I click explore and see a forum, it's a letdown.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, I don't _want_ to have to stop my music just because someone wants me to watch their video. I like my music! What's the big problem with text these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK I really tried to like this. However, most of the content seems to be at this level:

"Favorite historical person of importance?"

"Madonna. She was so extreme in her youth, that she made it safe for everyone else to be edgy."

I wonder how much that domain cost?

</comment><comment><USER6> As others have said, the video tells me nothing so I look at the about page - the description sounds great but provides no incentive to sign-up. You need to get me interested in a topic straight off the home page, without having to register.

</comment><comment><USER7> it's a ..... drumroll ..... web forum. With shiny web2.0 gradients.

<comment><USER8> Close, but I'd agree with ihatemummies in that it's closer to Yahoo Answers (at first glance at least). It seems more like a collection of forums (although I'm stretching that description as well).

But with a new scrollbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> After looking at a few of the discussions, I can non-authoritatively say this looks like a glorified version of yahoo answers.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations! I'm confused.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apart from hating the video, I also didn't sync my Twitter "friends" because gravity asked for write access. Reading should be enough to find my friends.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like public Waves work just as well?

</comment><comment><USER13> WHY did this get so many upvotes?!</comment>


Young Scientist Builds a Better Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/video/6F3049AB-61FE-4CEA-8972-45EFA94FFF27.html

<comment><USER2> You should rephrase the title to "young scientist begins learning about search engines". It's not the first time I've been teased by the promise of improved search and I'm always disappointed with the realization how infinitesimal the odds of unseating Google are. As such, anything worth mentioning is going to come from a PHD - not a kid who took an AI class a year early (I don't know anyone moderately interested in computer science who hasn't heard of Markov chains). Although they didn't mention anything specific about his algorithm in the video of which I'm still curious in seeing, I'm certain it's not any faster or more relevant than any other other basic search (not to be a debbie downer, there's simply smarter minds who've worked far longer on the same problem).

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually have a bot that has been doing this for several years. It stores word relations and keeps track of what words are used with others. It then can rank potential words that it has seen from your query before and use those as a subject to build a sentence from or as a highly targeted query for searching.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Schiefer is on his way to developing the next Google for the social-media world. The Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award winner sits down with digits to explain.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like an interesting idea; I hope he publishes more details. I also hope the next interviewer is not so detached.

</comment><comment><USER5> He looks a lot like Bill Gates when he was young.</comment>


Andreev Bay nuclear accident of 1982 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreev_Bay_nuclear_accident <comment> a-b [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/fotoindex.html](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/fotoindex.html)

picked couple pictures to illustrate:

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms1b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms1b.jpg)

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms2b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms2b.jpg)

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms4b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms4b.jpg)

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms5b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms5b.jpg)

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms8b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms8b.jpg) \- on this picture they are using concrete cube as a hammer to nail tubes with radioactive materials into the hole

• [http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms9b.jpg](http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms9b.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER2> Horrendous... each detail is more chilling than the last, culminating in the immersion in the pool of those two poor bastards. Hell indeed! The USSR and Russia had/have a horrendous safety record in all NBC domains, anthrax releases, nuclear disasters, poisoning with Polonium.. it's almost a bad joke.

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

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_al...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident)

Not to mention Chernobyl! Common themes are massive systemic fuckups and attempts to cover up making it all worse. Even without NBC it's the same pattern, turning bad into worse.

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

<comment><USER3> Underfunded mandates + constant military competition + PR-driven secrecy

It's worth remembering these were the other side of the "beat the Soviet Union by making it economically unsustainable to maintain military parity" course charted in the late 70s & 80s.

Ultimately a successful strategy, but cases like this (less so Chernobyl) can't be ignored as a consequence.

<comment><USER4> Rest assured, the Soviet government did not need any pressure from the outside to create its own version of hell on earth. If you doubt this, just read the Gulag Archipel (amongst others). The problems seen here do not relate to any western policies, they stem from the ineptitude of the Soviet government and pre-date any western attempt to topple the latter by "forcing" them to increase military spending:

       "The repository was constructed in the early 1960s
        by construction brigade soldiers from central Asian
        and Caucasian republics. Many did not have professional
        construction training, and some could not speak the
        Russian language."

<comment><USER3> If the accident was in 1982, I don't think attributing it solely to events at its construction in the 1960s is fair.

Construction issues could have been recognize and addressed in any of the intervening ~20 years.

And yes, chasing parity with the US did lead to unsustainable Soviet military GDP allocations, ultimately empowering Gorbachev with an economically- rather than ideologically-derived mandate and thus leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

It's a fair argument as to whether or not this was intentionally engineered, but it's a fact that the Soviets spent roughly twice as much of their GDP on their military, and that the Soviet Union eventually collapsed for economic reasons.

Soviet military spending by year: [https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet- union-military-spen...](https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union- military-spending/)

Reallocation example under Gorbachev: [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/31/world/soviet-military- budg...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/31/world/soviet-military- budget-128-billion-bombshell.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two ancient-history Soviet nuclear accidents on the front page of HN in a single day? Did I miss something?

<comment><USER6> No, I originally posted the first because I had just learned of it (and mistitled it "Russia", oops).

Perhaps that article jogged someone else's memory?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article needs citations but it was a good read.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can we put a [1982] in the title?

<comment><USER9> The article is not from 1982.

<comment><USER10> fallacy alert.

If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his presidency in 2008.

If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be misleading because is is also not about 2017.

Therefor, the ask for the year was to clarify people clicking in to the wikipedia page, that it's not current world news...

Just because you reply with a truism, it doesn't make you correct.

<comment><USER11> > fallacy alert.

He posted a fact and made no arguments. It's impossible for that to be a fallacy.

> If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article > was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his > presidency in 2008.

The inverse is true. It would be misleading to put '[2008]' in the title of such an article because the perspective and facts in the article would be totally different having been written in 2008 than in 2017. This is a great case for putting the publication date in the title.

> If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews > dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be > misleading because is is also not about 2017.

That would be a terrible title for an article written in 2017... I'd argue that's the fault of the author rather than the stylistic standard of including the publication date in square brackets.

The way dang edited the title (adding 'of 1982') is ideal for this purpose but unnecessary; the style of the original title made it clear that it's not a news article.

P.S. Outside the academic world we would take it easy with the thesaurus and just call it a fact, not a truism. ;)

<comment><USER10> I suppose implied arguments fly over your head?

Also, "truism," is an elementary school word. I suppose not in your zip code.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TouchingBase.io – Automated Follow Ups - <AUTHOR> https://touchingbase.io

<comment><USER2> I think this is great. Seems like tons of people would find this useful.

If you already have traction with customers already than great!

If not, you might need to follow up with them and get them to pay. Listen and iterate based on paying customers. Make them happy and I think you'll be good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a great idea. My only feedback is on the sales page. Every button is pushing me to try the demo, but nothing is sending me to sign up. I had to scroll to the bottom to find the pricing information, only then could I sign up for a paid account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. The pricing page comes up after trying the demo but it might be good to have it more prominent as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea - I'm not currently using gmail so I can't try it but it's on my todo list. If you would be cool if you could save templates for the draft emails for example "Current Client", "Lead".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a service I've made using the new Gmail API. I'd be grateful for any feedback.</comment>


Database backed websites in pure Javascript; No server side programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.brankovukelic.com/post/1080448257/rdbpaste-pure-javascript-pastebin

<comment><USER2> Securing this will be tough. I can't see how exposing SQL and the database schema on the client side, or running a dumb database driver layer on the server is a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exposing SQL and the database schema on the client is a good idea, in that it keeps all your code in one place (on the client). The server layer is thin, not dumb. It allows for restricting what queries run under a given database role.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HN Trending – Top posts, domains, comment links, show, ask, classics - <AUTHOR> https://hntrending.com/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome! I suspect you aren't getting upvotes because people click on it and get lost for an hour. :) I came back the next day to find you and upvote it.

Some cool posts I hadn't seen before:

\- Launch of Venmo ("Rate this Startup - Venmo.com"): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948700)

\- Launch of Meteor ("Show HN: Meteor, a realtime JavaScript framework): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824908)

\- Launch of Stripe ("Stripe: Instant payment processing for developers"): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883)

\- Launch of NomadList ("Show HN: Nomad List -- The best cities to live and work remotely in"): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222)

I also really like the "links" breakdown, especially XKCD and wikipedia. It really captures the culture of HN.

I guess my only suggestion would be to allow pagination in the top all time pages (i.e., go beyond 100).</comment>


Headphones are the new walls for people in open-plan offices - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/headphones-are-the-new-walls-for-people-in-open-plan-offices/ <comment><USER3> The fact that I HAVE to listen to something to be able to isolate myself from my surroundings is pretty depressing to me, specially because I don't like listening to music for long periods of time.

<comment><USER4> Try [http://asoftmurmur.com/](http://asoftmurmur.com/) \- it's meaningless ambient noise that I find quite effective as audio wallpaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an introvert 3 hours in a private office or even cubicle is probably equivalent to working 6 hours working in an open office space in terms of productivity.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps it makes economic sense to have you working less efficiently while saving a large amount on rent.

Perhaps if giving an office to an introvert developer they'd have to also give an office* to a large amount of other workers that work better with open offices such as extroverts and people whose jobs require a lot of communication and collaborative work* * .

* Because it is a status symbol.

* * Which actually covers developers, I sometimes wonder how much of the feedback here is wishful thinking "I'd be _so_ productive if left alone" rather than actual data.

<comment><USER7> > Perhaps it makes economic sense to have you working less efficiently while > saving a large amount on rent.

Open office vs. private office is about $4,000 a year for an employee. Doesn't take much lost productivity to break that barrier.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps if you're in an office park with arbitrary amounts of office space where costs simply scales linearly office size. Otherwise it tends to be far more than that.

<comment><USER7> Define "far more". I was basing that off of the numbers "110" and "160", which are square feet per employee for open offices and executive offices, respectively, and the yearly price of $100 per square foot. All of these figures are on the high side of the range for those figures- you can easily find office space for $20-$60 per square foot outside of SF and NY.

Now it's true that if you're dedicated to taking care of your employees, you might have to split the office earlier than you would with open floor plans, but to be frank you were looking at the need to do that anyways, just at a slightly higher employee count.

<comment><USER6> You're missing the most important part, which is there is far less square feet / person in open plan than with individual offices.

The cost per _person_ is much cheaper open plan than with offices.

<comment><USER7> EDIT: Mis-read your comment. Far less square footage is true, but the "far less" is not that much less. In the best case, it's a few scant square feet. In the worst (250 for a president-sized office, 60 for an exceptionally cramped open office footprint), it's still only about 190 square feet - <USER2> comes to around $19k a year. Still a pittance compared to the other costs of the employee.

ORIGINAL: The cost per person scales directly with the cost per square footage - that's the only practical difference between an employee in an open office and in an individual office (well, discounting potential increase production and fewer sick days).

There's going to be some additional up-front construction costs when you first take over a space, but when amortized over the fifteen years (which is how the accountants will book those costs), it's going to end up being pretty small.

What other costs do you feel that I'm missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (I moved into a "private" fishbowl office after I raised a fuss about this)

I've worked in an open floorplan with 3,15 and 20 people. Each one brings its own set of challenges. Team 3-person was easy. We were all introverts, didn't talk to each other (Yay Hipchat). Team 20 was easy. There were actually several different subgroups in there, so we didn't really talk past our small (2-3 in my case) team, and it was a large enough space that conversations carried, but weren't annoying (Most days).

It wasn't until I worked with the 15 that I legitimately wanted a private office. What changed? The new place plays music in the entire office. Even with the door closed, and my laptop playing some extremely loud white noise (I can't stand headphones for more than 2-3 hours), I can still hear the music that is playing outside my door. Also, phones. Desk phones. Everyone has one. Constantly ringing. So annoying.

In my experience of 3 companies, the types of companies that are going to go and have an open floorplan without talking to their team about it first, are the kind that will play music and distract everyone.

Edit: Added desk phones + commentary on the other 2 companies.

<comment><USER9> Things I've been reprimanded for in this environment include...

\- leaving my phone on do-not-disturb for days at a time, but still checking voicemail

\- leaving my phone unplugged. Nobody noticed for a week. Then the CEO called it. Can't do that anymore.

\- Wearing headphones.

\- Duct taping headphones to my head in an attempt to tell people to leave me alone.

\- commandeering the sound system to play white noise.

\- having signs like this up behind my desk: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH6waT2CAAIyS2H.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH6waT2CAAIyS2H.jpg)

most of my coworkers thought it was hilarious. Some others did not, and now I can't do these things. :(

<comment><USER10> Maybe the issue is with the tactfulness of the communication as opposed to the message itself?

<comment><USER9> This was after an extended discussion (about an hour) about why this environment sucked for programmers. Got told I was imagining things. Talking with my other technical coworkers, we decided that we would carry on with this. As of when I left, still hadn't changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It not only the audible noise you have to deal with it is also the visible noise of people walking past you making gesture to other in the room.

It is hoorible.

<comment><USER12> Yes this is super distracting, seeing people constantly walking by. It's hard to get any good chain of concentration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately headphones will not prevent people from tapping you on your shoulder and interrupting your flow.

I'm recently working remotely and I find that I'm a lot more productive in this environment than I was in open-plan offices. I do however miss the social aspect of easily being able to grab lunch with a couple of coworkers.

</comment><comment><USER14> The thing it all hinges on is containing noise. Nobody complains about studying in a library. Because it's quiet. If you want an open workspace to work, you have to make it quiet. Provide "phone booths" for phone calls and conference rooms or team rooms for groups talking.

<comment><USER15> >>Nobody complains about studying in a library. Because it's quiet.

I actually always did. When I was at uni I would avoid the library like a plague. The problem with an ultra-quiet environment is that literally EVERYTHING is annoying. Someone coughing. Moving papers. Quiet laughter. Clicking pens. It was seriously million times more distracting than working in open space office is.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I can't work very well in a dead quiet environment, because every little thing distracts me - even the sound of my own breathing, sometimes. Distraction is always a problem. Blotting everything out by listening to music helps a lot, particularly music free of vocals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why do companies choose to have an open office plan when it clearly hurts the productivity of some significant percentage of employees? I think there has to be some benefit that offsets the disadvantages. Noting that it doesn't have to be true benefit for the company, only a perceived benefit for the people making the decisions on office plans, what could this be? I don't know, but here are some ideas that seem at least plausible.

Perhaps the harm to the noise sensitive individuals is offset by the improvement to others. Is it better to have one individual at 100% and the other browsing the web all day, or to have both individuals at 60%? It depends on the work being done. Is it better to prevent 1 employee out of 100 from embezzling a hundred million dollars? Yes, but I'd suspect the risk isn't actually that high.

I'd guess that many managers (correctly or not) find it easier to supervise (micromanage) workers when they can see them constantly. If they are being judged (and promoted) by how "in control" they appear rather than the actual productivity of their department, I can see they'd push for large "panopticon" work spaces. It also seems likely that a manager would feel more secure in their position if they can monitor those who might seek to take it from them.

Maybe it's a combination of social status and cost? Such that providing tiny private offices for the lower level workers would be affordable, but the "obligation" to provide larger and more luxurious offices all the way up the chain would be prohibitive? It's possible that the possibility of being promoted to have an office is an significant incentive for some.

What else?

<comment><USER12> The main benefit that companies, pushing for open office plans, espouse is that it makes it easier for people to communicate face to face.

I'm pretty sure a big factor in the rationale for an open office is that it's even cheaper than having cubicles and (initially) the idea is sexier. For the companies in this mindset, they're probably ignoring the costs associated with decreased productivity.

There probably wasn't enough research on it at the time the open office started to become fashionable.

<comment><USER18> I find it much more difficult to communicate face to face in an open office. I don't want to bother everyone else so I communicate in a whisper and I don't really like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I could never work at a dump like these places again.

My day would consist of:

Alright lets get some work done. Oh, crap, Kevin is here and he is getting his coffee. Yep, slurp slurp slurp burp slurp slurp. Thank god that is over. Oh wait, he is eating one of those huge carrots again. Where the hell does he buy those? I doubt a horse could bite through one. EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! Even noise cancelling headphones can't dampen this noise. EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH!

Finally, he is done. Oh, wait, another cup of coffee. SLuuuuuuuuURP! And now he is on the phone talking to his cousin about sportsball again at loud levels and laughing every 10 seconds.

Well, I now have a massive headache, no way I will be able to concentrate hard enough to do anything.

</comment><comment><USER20> Incoming ban on office headphones to improve "communication" ...

<comment><USER21> I worked in a place that did that, it was terrible. When I started, it was part of the culture to have small conversations throughout the day and the team that I worked on had 3 people. The people that talked throughout the day left and eventually the team grew to 8 or 9 with most people wearing headphones. The manager decided that productivity had gone down because of headphones and decided that nobody would be allowed wear them anymore.

<comment><USER22> No! How could anyone have such a colossal lack of common sense?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure I'd love to have a private office but just how feasible is that? My current company has 18 full-time "knowledge workers", where in the world is a startup going to find them all private offices?

I'd really love to know what the alternative is that we're all missing out on? I've worked in cubical farms, bullpens and open-plan offices and none of them are ideal but headphones, IM and established boundaries mean I can work in peace when I want to.

<comment><USER12> There's always a way if you want it bad enough.

Maybe there's a good alternative that's a cross between a real private office and a traditional cubical?

I know at Pixar a lot of employees have their own huts. [https://thedreamofpixar.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/who-ever- sa...](https://thedreamofpixar.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/who-ever-said-office- space-had-to-be-boring/) When you take a weekend or two to build it yourself, it's not that expensive.

I believe Joel Spoelsky (I think) had something different too, where it wasn't a real private office with a huge space and thick walls but something with thinner walls that let light in but were opaque

I'm sure you can probably also work with a local university that has an industrial design program. Maybe some of their students can design cheap portable structures that are easy to assemble, cheap to build, aesthetically pleasing, and yet offers a decent amount of both auditory and visual privacy?

<comment><USER24> The cynic in me thinks that, in most places, it would be like the Better Off Ted episode where the bosses decided it was too risky to let people "just do whatever the hell they wanted", but they could express their individuality through one of four preselected and inoffensive themes: Green Bay Packers, cats, space, and race cars.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWJ0NQuicE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWJ0NQuicE)

<comment><USER12> I think people who have the problem of open work spaces wouldn't mind something as uniform and boring as a cubicle or a near equivalent since it's seen as a lesser evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tough thing about headphones is I find they're only comfortable for so long. That, and there are times where I can't really work with music and just need quiet.

<comment><USER26> I'm the same, I can't wear any kind of "on ear" headphones for more than an hour or two before my ears hurt. Instead, I got some studio monitor style over ear headphones (Sennheiser HD380P to be specific) that are super comfy and have a huge noise reduction to boot. I can wear them all day no problem.

As for noise, I don't work in an office (mostly at home), but if I need to cut out the noise but don't want music I still will put on my headphones. If I _really_ need to cut out the world, some white noise will do the trick.

<comment><USER27> I also listen to noise instead of music to block outside sound. I use sox on mac/linux/windows to generate brown noise which I find less tiresome than white noise.

Sox is well documented but here is the command I use for 90 minutes of brown noise (I try to get up and walk for a minute each time it finishes).

play -n synth 90:00 brownnoise brownnoise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Blocking noise" with more sound will make you deaf.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think since the ideal solution is to have both open and closed type areas available and let the employees pick. You probably get more productivity by letting the employee choose their optimal working space.

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone please make an HN poll asking what type of office we all work in - open, cubicle, small office, other...

I lack the karma

<comment><USER30> Not exactly what you're wanting but there was a poll a little while ago asking what people prefer:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815512)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Impossible to pair up with someone, unless you both put on headsets and share a channel like a tank crew.

</comment><comment><USER32> To the people recommending white noise, be careful. I developed tinnitus from listening to white noise. Now whenever I hear white noise, including fans, etc., there is a high-pitched ringing in my left ear. Not fun.</comment>


Show HN: WeeklySetup – A little weekend project about workspaces - <AUTHOR> http://weeklysetup.herokuapp.com

<comment><USER2> This is great. Every few months I will spend a day on [http://reddit.com/r/battlestations](http://reddit.com/r/battlestations) ogling workstations. This will hopefully scratch that itch in a more metered way.</comment>


Facebook Integrates Book Swap Feature into Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/23/facebook-integrates-book-swap-feature-into-marketplace/

<comment><USER2> "Ah! My business idea!"

(thousands of frat boys mourn the only way they know how: natti light)</comment>


Ask HN: Best of Tech and Startup April Fools Announcements - <AUTHOR>

Would love to see some of the awesome product announcements that are coming today.  Lets keep this thread alive. <comment><AUTHOR> Smartbox by Inbox

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/smartbox-by-inbox- mai...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/smartbox-by-inbox-mailbox-of- tomorrow.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> There is already a big list on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9302010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9302010)

</comment><comment><USER3> Twilio's Telegram API

[https://www.twilio.com/API/telegram](https://www.twilio.com/API/telegram)

<comment><USER4> I wish companies were committed enough to make jokes like this one real, if only for a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-button](https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-button)

<comment><USER6> Pretty sure this is legitimate.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://com.google](http://com.google)</comment>


How Paris ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PS4 to Discuss and Plan Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" With PlayStation 4, it seems likely that simple voice communication could have worked just fine. It's still difficult for investigators to monitor IP- based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone. In 2010, the FBI pushed for access to all manner of Internet communications, including gaming chat systems."_

Can anyone confirm this?

<comment><USER2> Its been documented that mmorpg's are breeding grounds for illicit activity

[http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft- intellig...](http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence- agencies-spied-in-online-games)</comment></comment>


GraphQL: A Retrospective - <AUTHOR> https://verve.co/engineering/graphql-a-retrospective/ <comment><USER2> While this post is supposed to be about GraphQL, it seems to focus more about the benefits of having a centralized request broker / gateway for your APIs and nothing unique to GraphQL.

Their rule of "AVOID NESTING OBJECTS, JUST RETURN IDS OF RELATED OBJECTS" definitely is missing out one of the core benefits of GraphQL: being able to fetch related resources in a single request. Feels to me like they decided to switch to GraphQL cause it's supposedly better but are still utilizing it exactly like you would a REST API.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that they are keeping their REST endpoints flat, however their gateway graphql layer can still respond with nested resources - it would require aggregating multiple REST requests together.

<comment><USER4> Right, this is the approach I've always advocated. I don't mention it specifically in this post I wrote a while ago about optimising GraphQL, but my implicit assumption was that you're building your GraphQL server on top of an underlying platform:

[https://blog.apollographql.com/optimizing-your-graphql- reque...](https://blog.apollographql.com/optimizing-your-graphql-request- waterfalls-7c3f3360b051)

In real-world UIs, I've found that queries rarely end up being more than a few levels deep and are relatively easily optimised as long as your internal APIs can handle batches (easy for entities, harder for pagination). Additionally, even though the only-return-IDs-for-relations pattern means you can't utilise joins effectively, the upside is that you end up with much simpler database queries that area easier to optimise at scale. My rule of thumb was that as long as the query representing an entire screen could typically return in sub 100ms in production, it was acceptable (this was without any caching at the GraphQL level, which I had planned but left the company before I could implement it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't yet had much luck in finding a GraphQL review that addresses my general concerns (I'm frontend).

1) GraphQL almost always means everything is POST, removing CDN and browser caching of GET-like requests is gone (and ServiceWorker caching just got much more complicated, nigh-impossible if CORS is involved). Everyone says "oh, clients can do better caching", as if that's not true without GraphQL. Still, the caching I mention might be trivial and mostly worthless. I'd just like to see some actual inspection of the issue.

2) The models I've seen work well if your frontend is largely a thin skin over the services with minimal business logic of their own. (this isn't GraphQL directly, but the client libs that use it, but those exist because talking GraphQL without them is more effort). Which is, of course, what we really want. Business logic in the front end is always a painful idea. But it also definitely happens, for real business reasons - are we making those cases harder? How much so? With REST we have a lot more flexibility, it seems, even if we choose to avoid using most of it.

<comment><USER6> The caching story in GraphQL sucks. Its pretty good with frontend frameworks like Apollo, but that's not a solution to the whole problem. Sure it works for your website/app (if you've got one), but it does nothing to offer caching for a generic API.

Its easy to argue that the main advantage of GraphQL is to reduce overfetching fields on the data you need for your views. That's a great advantage. But how much of the performance advantage gained from this is offset by the substantially reduced backend cacheability of these requests? I would guess a ton, especially with highly complex views that require lots of database pulls.

That isn't to say simple caching strategies aren't still possible (you can encode GraphQL requests into GETs and just cache that url at the CDN layer, this is part of the spec AFAIK). But when you have an open API serving many users, where you can't predict what fields they're going to ask for (or even the ORDERING of those fields in their request, which would change the request body despite the response being the same!), this has to be a problem that crops up pretty quick.

There's no HTTP-level solution to this. I doubt there's any solution that would work well enough to be worth implementing. Which leads me to believe that its an intrinsic problem in GraphQL; the more freedom you give clients to request whatever they want, the harder it becomes to guarantee performance for the requests they're making. And GraphQL gives clients all the freedom in the world.

Oh, and don't even get me started about the fact that because GraphQL stitches together essentially depth-unlimited data from your data graph in one request, there's no way to express different TTLs on each item returned, on the backend _or_ the frontend. If you've got data that could TTL for 24 hours, but another piece of data that TTLs for 60 seconds, you essentially have to specify the cache-control to account for the smallest TTL.

Overall, I think GraphQL is fine. But I also believe what we'll slowly discover is that "Company X" simply fucked up their REST API, then will look to GraphQL to solve all their problems. And it might solve some of them, but then they'll have an even more complex system in place with even harder problems. Facebook can solve those problems; us small shops can't. Better hope Facebook shares their solutions with the world.

<comment><USER7> Case in point, from the article:

> Any API change had to be deployed simultaneously to all services using that > API to avoid downtime, which often went wrong and resulted in long release > cycles.

There's an easy solution to that problem, which is a versioned API.

<comment><USER8> Is it easy? Multiple api versions can be pretty annoying / tedious

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> GraphQL is a curious beast. Developed by Facebook as part of one of its many attempts to solve a fundamental problem for engineers: how to loosely couple the frontend and backend, while maximizing query performance and allowing flexibility in the frontend.

GraphQL does this, yes, but it's not particularly _smart_ about how caching works or how to avoid the Select N+1 problem. Their solution* is the blunt hammer that is Facebook's dataloader project which is basically: aggressively cache data model, pretend databases and joins and SQL doesn't exist, throw away any hope for ACID/consistency. Dataloader for example exposes all sorts of new and exciting types of inconsistency. This is hand-waved away because, I guess, consistency is boring and user expectations are low or irrelevant. (A comment with a missing edge to a post is invisible, a post with a missing edge to a comment has 0 comments. It'll all work itself out in the end.)

Curiously, Facebook went a long way down the road to fixing _this exact problem_ on the backend with a library called Haxl, written in Haskell. Haxl allows expressing relations between multiple data stores in a way that _looks_ like using an ORM, but under the hood creates a query and obviates the Select N+1 problem: a function which appears to select a post and for each comment retrieve an edge to the person who posted it will perform a single SELECT against the database, maintaining consistency with that store. There's no fundamental reason that couldn't be written in most dynamically typed languages or ORMs (though Haskell provides some really nice type level guarantees).

What's bizarre to me is that the former took off, and the latter is largely unknown outside the Haskell community.

* - Other ORMs have recognized this, and there are efforts underway for GraphQL backends in Python (Graphene) and Ruby, at least, to solve this.

<comment><USER10> I didn't understand why you have to use caching with DataLoader. I am also not sure about what you mean by inconsistency. The n + 1 query problem is usually solved by making two consecutive queries to the database. One for the root element and one for the total list of all edges, thanks to DataLoader. What is the problem with that?

<comment><USER9> Because you are now relying on consistency to be orchestrated in both the database and the dataloader instance(s).

1\. If the dataloader isn't the sole service with database connections, the cache will be invalid when other services interact with the database.

2\. Even if the dataloader is the sole mechanism for accessing the database, you have to figure out how to scale that to multiple nodes and maintain cache coherency on each.

3\. Even if you run just a single dataloader instance or figure out how to ensure cache coherency, that layer is still oblivious to triggers on the database and so you had better not use any advanced functionality there.

4\. Even if you strip away all of the low level SQL features and treat the database as a dumb searchable KVS with a single dataloader instance (or cache coherent layer in front of it), then you are still performing two queries and mutations which occur in parallel with queries can result in non-repeatable reads or phantom reads because the default in many GraphQL packages is that each query processed with sub-queries runs with no transaction wrapped around it.

5\. Even if you ensure that every GraphQL gets a unique transaction, that doesn't mean the DataLoader cache is _coherent_ with the database transactions, and I haven't seen any papers or effort to verify that, so there's no guarantee parallelization can't result in dirty reads.

6\. Okay, so you have a single threaded, single instance dataloader instance with a mutex around a database connection that runs every GraphQL query's subqueries in a transaction...

This is all fine if you're dealing with, well, comments and posts or other trivium in which consistency isn't an issue. Which actually happens to be the type of problems many large successful companies have to deal with.

But if you are dealing with financial data, medical data, scheduling of resources, anything where the equivalent paradigm of "my friend posted but I don't see it yet, therefore I can't comment on her post" or "my post loaded but I don't see my friend's comment on it yet" is an issue makes it a minefield for consistency.

<comment><USER10> I still don't understand what you expect DataLoader or GraphQL to solve for you.

The list of problems you mentioned are not what DataLoader/GraphQL are trying to solve. I am even not sure if there is an individual library that can solve these problems. The solution to them are at architectural level and requires more discussions than the decision to use GraphQL/DataLoader or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like they implemented an ESB. What's old is new.

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

<comment><USER12> To be fair, I'll take a GraphQL server over WebMethods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Off-topic if employees of the company are here: Friendly suggestion to work on the home page. I couldn't for the life of me understand what it is that company is about. The headline says NOTHING, and the paragraph after it is so confusing.

<comment><USER14> [http://verve.co/our-products/](http://verve.co/our-products/)

> _VERVE EVENTS is the global market leader in word-of-mouth sales in the live > entertainment industry. We use networks of advocates to sell products and > experiences to their friends in exchange for rewards such as free tickets > and backstage passes._

...

> _POLLEN is a community of influential young people who are passionate about > sharing the best events. We handpick Members and, through our tools and > support, make it easy for them to share their passion._

...

This _sounds_ like a hip, trendy veneer atop the concepts of affiliate sales, and offshore farms of fake review writers. I suspect that their landing page is vague by design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you need some additional insights on how to integrate GraphQL and Python, Patrick Arminio from the Verve team gave a talk at PyParis this month:

\- Slides: [http://pyparis.org/static/slides/Patrick%20Arminio-1cba4f64....](http://pyparis.org/static/slides/Patrick%20Arminio-1cba4f64.pdf)

\- Vidéo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA1TuKfVTlg&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA1TuKfVTlg&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER16> This article is really hard to understand. Is the gateway just for the UI as per normal or is it for all the backend services also?! The diagram doesn't help much because it looks like the backend services can call the front-end services. I don't quite get that a gateway can be on each backend service too, is that just to save a single network hop at the expense of every service taking a dependency on the gateway and thus every service..

</comment><comment><USER17> Whenever I see descriptions of adopted solutions like this one, I always feel that someone is rushing towards a predetermined solution without having really checked the available options. You have a starting point and a set of issues. What are the minimal changes you can adopt to solve your problems, before deciding to use a new concept/ framework/ pre-packaged solution? In this specific case, two issues seem to stand out: the lack of a gateway, and the issue of breaking api changes. Both seem to be easily solvable without the need to jump to a completely different model. Maybe it was really the best choice, but I would be more convinced if the complete set of problems with the old architecture was clearly laid out and the possible options to solve them one by one had been clearly analyzed.

</comment><comment><USER4> One point of clarification (or correction, not quite sure) - using GraphQL as an API Gateway (as opposed to the GraphQL server directly talking to the data layer) for 1st-party clients is actually pretty common in the GraphQL world.

What's less common is using the GraphQL server for service-to-service communication, though i've been aware of people using it this way for my entire 3 years with GraphQL. I'm not yet convinced it's superior to alternative solutions to this problem (like gRPC, Thrift, other API Gateway patterns like JSON-API), but it could well be. I'm still happy using GraphQL in its sweet spot (and not-coincidentally what it was designed for), which is building an API for 1st-party websites and apps.

<comment><USER18> One service-to-service case where I've found GraphQL extremely useful is report generation.

For example, in one case we had around a dozen services with fairly typical REST APIs, a few of which we wanted to pull large inter-related sets of information from. Using GraphQL allowed us to:

\- Have a single large-but-human-readable query to retrieve all report data.

\- Analyze deep nesting up front to determine opportunities for caching and eager loading.

\- Abstract details regarding what data was coming from what service, plus handle any quirks (e.g. inconsistent auth strategies) at the GraphQL layer.

Without having to make many modifications to the underlying services. We also saw a two-order-of-magnitude performance improvement that would otherwise have required building out a lot of service-specific awareness into our reporting service.

Granted reporting is a unique case, but the simplified gateway layer and potential for query analysis are also major advantages as the number of API consumers grows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The best part about Graphql is that it's a query language for API. It was my dream years ago to have a query language from my frontend code. Using REST always seems a smell to me.

<comment><USER20> It's not _really_ a query language. Certainly not a general purpose query language. It's more of a __somewhat flexible RPC __, honestly.

It smells like a query language from a distance, but when you get close it smells much more of SOAP.

For instance say I'm receiving a list of widgets, but I only need the red ones. Unless the API developers explicitly foresaw the need to include a color filter, I can't filter that on their side. I have to get _all colors_ of Widgets and filter it myself. The amount of unessessary data then can really multiply when you're getting the children and children's children of those widgets.

Having ported a number of APIs connectors from REST to GraphQL, I can say it has certainly greatly reduced the number of requests I've needed to make, but has often also greatly increased the amount of actual bytes I've received, particularly the bytes I don't need.

<comment><USER21> >It smells like a query language from a distance, but when you get close it smells much more of SOAP.

This smell is something I just can't move past when it comes to graphql.</comment></comment></comment>


The Fictiv Open-Source Motorcycle - <AUTHOR> https://www.fictiv.com/blog/fosmc <comment><USER2> Hey all, Madelynn here, community director at Fictiv and one of the folks on the Open-Source Motorcycle project.

Thanks for sharing this project and giving feedback, looks like the signup flow is causing some confusion, so we're in process of removing the need to enter your email to get access to the files.

I'm passionate about open source, as is our team, so we intended this project to be entirely open source and available to anyone to download, modify, and build upon the project. Documentation is still in the works, and I'm always looking for more folks to help out.

To remove vaporware concerns, you can download the files straight from here: [http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y](http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y), and email me if you have any questions directly to me at email@example.com

If you want to talk motorcycles in general, I'm all ears there too. :)

<comment><USER3> Cool, I take my comment about "vapourware" then. :)

With the STEP files for download, their metadata indicates they were created using Solidworks 2014.

Would it be feasible to include the Solidworks files for people to download too?

Although not everyone has Solidworks (obviously), its native file format would be useful for those who do. :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, justinclift, appreciate it. :)

Hm, I don't see any issues with that, let me see what I can do. Feel free to email me if you have any other suggestions, on the files or documentation (which is being built out now), always could use another POV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone tell if this is really open source [1] [2]. The design files are not available available to me, even after trying to 'get early access'.

I'm always wary of companies claiming "open source" as they often incorrectly think that opens source means "we let you look at the code" and don't release the source code and design files under a free/libre license.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- source_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- source_hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware)

<comment><USER2> Yup, we followed OSH guidelines when building this project. As open source advocates here at Fictiv, we wanted the CAD to be downloadable and modifiable by anyone.

We realize that the current email signup flow causes some friction to getting the files, it's being remedied ASAP. In the meanwhile, here's the files: [http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y](http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking a the sideshot, it just appears to be an older style Ducati Monster with the trademark trellis frame replaced and a switch to a twinshock rear suspension.

Not my bike as I don't have a picture handy:

[http://moto.zombdrive.com/images/ducati- monster-620-dark-10....](http://moto.zombdrive.com/images/ducati- monster-620-dark-10.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Yup, we decided to start with the older Ducati Monster Gen 1 trellis frame because:

a) it's widely accessible (used on Ducati bikes made from 1993-2007). Our team is based in SF, which is a distribution point for Ducati, meaning there's a glut of old generations available to tear apart, but they're easily accessible everywhere.

b) the mounting points on the engine mean that you can swap out for multiple types of engines, depending on your preference (620, 800, and you could possibly wedge a 748 in there if you really wanted to...)

c) the frame allows easy customization of the CAD files, based on style preference - you can make it shorter for a Bobber, longer for a Cafe Racer, change the rake and trail angles, etc. to fit your needs.

One of the women on the team who inspired this project is a track racer and finds it difficult to find bikes that work for her shorter stature, so this was a great use case for the customization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      CNC machined parts

      Machine at your local machine shop by through leveraging
      Fictiv's distributed manufacturing network

Looking at the parts in the photo, they'll need _at least_ a 5 axis CNC machine. If it's for a one-off (or even low volume) job, that's not going to be cheap.

<comment><USER6> Well I guess the idea is that by using Fictiv you should be able to have these parts machined at a relatively low cost.

By the way, I'm always thoroughly impressed by Fictiv's marketing strategy, blog posts, and community outreach. They're doing a great job at making you WANT to use their services.

<comment><USER3> > They're doing a great job at making you WANT to use their services.

??? You're literally the first person I've seen give that sentiment. Maybe I'm just getting the wrong impression from this "Open-Source Motorcycle" vapourware of theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quite a bit promised, and lacking any estimate of price or specifications on the bike itself.

<comment><USER2> We originally wanted to keep it 10-15k, current files if produced as a 1-off may run higher, (closer to 20k). With interest, we want to batch produce these which keeps the cost lower. Cost will vary depending on obvious modifications and sources.

The download also has the full BOM, you can download those here: [http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y](http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for responding. Without knowing much about Ducatis, what are the engine models that are available for this? Didn't see any jump out at first scan of the files.

PS you'll want to change your README.txt to README.md for Github's markdown formatter to read it correctly.

<comment><USER2> M600, M750, S2R 800. M900, later 748's, and 916's with a SSS (single-sided swing arm). Some other engines that require a SSS are also doable, but may need some additional modifications.

Thanks for the note on README, will adjust accordingly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm a bit confused, but when you sign up with your email, there's no way to find the "early access" plans?

It seems like this is an ad for Fictiv, and not an ad or information about an open source motorcycle?

<comment><USER2> Sorry yial, looks like the current email flow causes friction, it's being fixed now. Here's the files: [http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y](http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y) and feel free to reach out with any questions.

<comment><USER8> My mistake, I eventually did get an email with a link to the files --- I would rate it more under my own impatience coupled with the redirect to the fictiv main site.

Thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a signup troll. You can't actually order a kit.

<comment><USER2> Sorry about that @Animats, wasn't intended as such. Here are the files: [http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y](http://bit.ly/2mU6l2y), please let us know what you think!

<comment><USER9> OK. Here's one of those parts, the frame head top.[1] Needs at least 4-axis machining, maybe 5. I wonder how the work is held. All the modeled parts are frame components or brackets. No moving parts. It's a frame replacement. It's a nice piece of work, but the hype exceeds what's been done.

This reminds me of early marketing for the MakerBot Replicator, which was supposed to be able to "replicate itself". Except for the motors, leadscrews, bearings, extruder, and electronics. The few 3D printed parts were frame connectors.

[1] [https://pichoster.net/images/2017/03/16/7c1f2cae9ebcab7cea27...](https://pichoster.net/images/2017/03/16/7c1f2cae9ebcab7cea2749a3732f6342.png)

<comment><USER2> The part you referenced was done on a 3-axis machine by one of our manufacturing partners. Like many expert machinists, he's got some ingenious methods for reducing set ups.

Appreciate that feedback. As someone who painfully remembers the early MakerBot marketing days, I feel the frustration.

Would be great to hear any suggestions on changes you'd make. Definitely want to make sure the copy is representative of the project.

We were inspired after we saw other motorcycle projects that beautiful, but didn't have any files available, or weren't even drivable. So we wanted to make a frame that was easily customizable and could be road-ready as fast as possible.

Can I pick your brain further? Feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Happy to talk more about how the work is held, machines needed, etc. as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone other than fictiv built one?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure road safety laws don't allow you to use this in European Union.

<comment><USER2> Unsure about EU, this is track ready for U.S. and could be road ready with the right DMV paperwork.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Your Instant SSL Certificate Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.fasterssl.com/

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<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that is what we are working on. At the moment it is the cheapest that we can offer. The main feature is that no registration is needed on our site.</comment></comment>