Cracked Siri has been successfully ported to an iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/15/siri-iphone-apple/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> except the voice recognition part doesn't work. other than that! :)

edit: looks like it just won't communicate with apple's server? (Which I think is the main functionality) it's hard to tell since video doesn't show any voice commands working.

<comment><USER3> The main functionality doesn't work. Useless.

<comment><USER4> C'mon.. you have to start somewhere. Do you honestly think that when you reverse engineer a product you end up with a 100% compatible clone on the first release/iteration. Give it some time.

There's no reason to be so negative.

<comment><USER2> It's just that the title implies that it's been ported in a working fashion.

<comment> dorian-graph Some people here are acting as if they were just told that Santa Clause isn't real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> you have to wonder if the beta tag has been applied purely because of scaling the servers, artificially holding back to the 4S rather than iphone 4 and ipad 2 probably makes capacity planning a lot easier!

<comment><USER6> I can tell you this, last night while playing with Siri we had several periods where it "couldn't connect to the network" - these were not networking issues, everything else worked fine.

<comment><USER7> By "not networking issues" you must mean not issues with your network: because surely they were networking issues related to Apple's AI processing network... i.e. the cloud

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why isn't Siri on iOS 5 for the iPhone 4?

<comment><USER9> Because they'll sell more hardware that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would it take to port to a 3GS?

<comment><USER11> A miracle? :P Best you can hope for is finding a copy of the old Siri app

<comment><USER12> The old Siri app doesn't work anymore, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just tried this.

"I want you to call me Gorgeous"

and from that point on Siri calls me Gorgeous! haha

"Ok Gorgeous what do you want to do!" :D

<comment><USER14> Can you make it call you Rumplestiltskin? What's the longest name?

<comment> X-Istence Yes, it will just update your "me" contact with that nickname and from then on will call you that =).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The 4S is was entirely a software update from a features perspective. The article definitely lends more credence to this argument, because Apple said that the Siri was a 4S only feature. The biggest announcement that Apple made, in my mind, is the fact that the iPhone 3 is now free with contract.

<comment><USER16> Yep. Nothing but software, except for dual-core, faster CPU, much faster GPU, 8MP camera, 1080P video, and combined CDMA-GSM radios that can roam internationally no matter your carrier.

But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

edit: Not double the RAM.

<comment><USER17> You're right that it's a major update, but unfortunately the RAM didn't double.

<comment><USER16> Whoops. You are correct. I thought the 4 had 256MB.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Achilles' Heel of 3D Printing - <AUTHOR> http://www.iijiij.com/?p=15281&preview=true <comment><USER2> I happened to be reading Make magazine's 3d printing guide, and I was struck the similarity to late 70s/early 80s personal computers. Lots of different technologies. Kits. (Mostly) terrible cases, even wooden ones. All sorts of "solution looking for problem" kinds of examples - 3d printing a coat hook is the "key all your recipes into a computer" of this decade.

To outsiders, 1970s computing looked like a bunch of kooky hobbyists, and it wasn't far off. I think in 10 or 20 years, 3d printing is going to be the solution to lots of problems we haven't considered yet.

<comment><USER3> The difference is that 3D printing is already 20 years old. It's maturing a bit more slowly than did software.

<comment><USER4> That's very misleading. In the late 1970s computers were already 30 years old.

Yes, the "PC" was new. And that's the whole point - we now have cheap (but rubbish) desktop 3D printers. It's the equivalent of the transition from mainframe to minicomputer to PC.

<comment><USER5> While you're right that both were old technologies. 3DP is noticeably slower in many variables. If we look at the "quality" of output from the mainframes -> Apple II, we see that the calculations would of course be the same and the programming largely the same - the discrete nature of programming being what it is.

However, the dimension of cost for 3DP (which is what the personal 3D printer movement is excited about) is only one dimension of many, and I'd argue not the biggest limitation.

3DP materials and process quality have certainly improved over time, but all of the current technologies are dead-ends in regards to competing with traditional processes - i.e. FDM/SLA/ProJet/PolyJet don't physically seem able, ever, to produce parts as nice as injection molding can for a myriad of reasons - even without cost as a concern. The situation for SLM/ProMetal processes is little better.

Perhaps the recent investment in 3DP will increase R&D spend on quality, but it doesn't seem to be the case if you look at the major or "maker" players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That list of criticisms isn't really so harsh but rather honest constructive suggestions and realistic assessments of where 3D printing is now.

That being said, there are a lot of comparisons to 70s era computers and it seems to be a valid observation. However, past performance is not indicative of future results.

In 10-20-30 years after the 70s hobby home computing club, applications are obvious.

So, maybe this is hard to ask, but what applications do you think are going to be obvious in 30 years time? What is the Visicalc of 3D printing going to be? What if there is no killer app?

<comment><USER7> The killer app is "just in time" manufacturing of single parts from a gigantic library. This will create a "long tail" type business that can offer a huge line of obscure parts that otherwise aren't available, as the original manufacturing lines will have been closed down long ago.

Someday, 3D printing will probably be fast enough and improved enough to displace a variety of low-volume manufacturing applications. "Improved enough" to my mind would be manufacturing in metal with much more precise tolerance.

<comment><USER8> >The killer app is "just in time" manufacturing of single parts from a gigantic library. This will create a "long tail" type business that can offer a huge line of obscure parts that otherwise aren't available

Have you ever held a McMaster-Carr catalog?

<comment><USER9> I have. That is where I order parts for my 3d printer. Interestingly, you are making op's point because I frequently have to order from other places because as long a tail as Mcmaster-Carr can cover, it doesn't come close to being all that I need. It is essentially a comparison of a long, but finite tail vs. a practicaly infinite one (ie, anything I can create in a cad file).

<comment><USER8> > That is where I order parts for my 3d printer.

And you make my point :)

<comment><USER9> _some_ of my parts :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >if we suddenly discovered a way to do 3D printing (probably using 3D technologies other than those in current use) that was anywhere near as fast as conventional manufacturing, the resulting revolution could [...]

And that is 3D printing hype in a nutshell: yes, the technology and its conceivable developments are not good enough to replace any significant part of mass production. But if some miraculous new development happened, if only this technology could develop at a pace as fast as some incredible outlier such as integrated circuits, then it would be a revolution!

In fact there is nothing that revolutionary about 3D printing, and it is very closely related to manufacturing technologies that were simply developed earlier because they held more economic potential. At its core, a 3D printer is a working head that is computer-controlled to move in three dimensions with an attached tool that _deposits_ small amounts of material. A CNC milling machine is also a 3D-moving working head with an attached tool that _removes_ small amounts of material. This is far more useful because you can work with any kind of material you want.

"Ah," the 3D printing evangelists will say, "but that is so wasteful! We need an accretive process to economize material." Except we already have another widely-successful industrial process that also works by adding material: industrial robotics. An industrial robot arm is a computer-controlled 3D moving working head (notice a pattern here?) that can add new parts to an existing workpiece. The parts are standardized and mass-produced separately, at a ridiculously low price, out of ridiculously strong materials.

So between CNC milling and industrial robotics, which are basically the same technology with different working heads, there is just not that much of a niche for 3D printing to make a dent into. Yes, that could change tomorrow if aliens came down from heaven and brought us a miraculously advanced 3D printer. But at that point the discussion reaches ground previously reserved for messianic religions, a discussion that I'd rather stay out of right now.

<comment><USER10> You nailed it other than the bit about robot arms adding parts. 3D printing and reductive fabrication methods both make parts, it's not about assembly.

Still, 3D printing is in its infancy, already the food industry is getting more and more of them, they're being used in different parts of the process (for instance: mould making, which is a very delicate art) and they're getting more precise, faster and cheaper. Let's give it a few years before we declare it a failure, the camera obscura wasn't a very good DSLR either.

<comment><USER8> You can sometimes make the same product by either shaping it directly or by making smaller, simple parts and binding them with e.g. screws. That's why I feel industrial robotics should be part of the discussion.

I do actually agree that 3D printing has pretty convincing use cases: food industry, small aluminum parts for airplane engines, customized cartilage replacement etc. I just think these are relatively small and non-revolutionary niches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My company has over a dozen 3D printers in the our design office in SF and our manufacturing facility in Shenzhen. They range from $250K professional units to $1K consumer models. I've seen the progression from old 2001 models to the the state of the art models purchased this year.

12 years later, and the latest printers are good for 1 purpose.

 __PROTOTYPING __

Sure, a hobbyist may find this tech somewhat useful. For example to print a case for his raspberry PI. Even that takes 4 hours to print, and if he drops it, it will shatter. Oh and finish is TERRIBLE. If a mass produced version is available it will always be better in every way.

I've never held any 3D printed part in my hand that compares to a nice soft touch painted part, or even an injected molded piece.

This tech is like where the semiconductor industry was in the 50s. 60 years from now, we'll be printing some cool shit. But in a few years time, we're not going to be printing out shoes, headphones, and furniture like people here are dreaming about here.

</comment><comment><USER12> Look at this picture: [http://www.reprap.org/wiki/File:2012-12-15-clone-wars- geneal...](http://www.reprap.org/wiki/File:2012-12-15-clone-wars- genealogy-90-clones-peq.png)

It is about a project that started 1 year ago in Spain making 3d printers and now have more than 100 of them(the graph gets outdated fast).

There is today more new people coming to this technology every single year than the entire population dedicated to them before.

3D printer is not about what could be done with it today, but about what these people is going to do in the future from that.

E.g Inexpensive(1/10 the price of filament) plastic printing from pellets: <http://makibox.com/details/product/makibox_a6_ramen_bundle>

PS:I have a 3d printer and love it.

<comment><USER13> I have a 3d printer (makerbot), and I love it.

But I also produce low-volume injection-molded plastic parts.

and building the molds and then producing the parts is still faster.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to read a post on your mold making and injection molding adventures.

<comment><USER13> Well, the product is a LEGO-compatible case for iPhone 4/4S and iPhone 5, available at smallworks.com. It was my then 12 year-old son's idea.

The first mold, for the iPhone 4/4S) were made in China. The second was for the iPod Touch (4th gen). We've modified the second here in Austin for the iPhone 5.

We use Solidworks to design the part, and then outsource the actual mold design. If it was a two plate mold (just cavity & core), then we would probably do it ourselves, but all three (actually, 2.5, I guess) molds have 3 sliders as well. These require a semi-complex mechanism, and need to be hand fit (with bluing, very old-school/traditional) in order to hold the pressure of the injection molding process.

The pieces for the third mold were all done with EDM, rather than traditional CNC machining.

We do the injection-molding just outside Austin, though I'm considering moving it to Houston.

Duplicating LEGO is about as difficult as it gets in the injection molding world.

Though my degree was in ME, I'm really more of a software guy.

(We're about the same age, btw.)

<comment><USER10> Super stuff man, really. And that's a great idea, your son really got that one right. Amazing story.

I took the liberty of sending out a tweet about this, hope it will get you some sales.

I've worked with a professional moldmaker where we had molds made for the casting of the base/table for a CNC rig (very hard to make a stable rig, lots of interesting postprocessing for hardening).

Molds are fascinating, especially molds for high pressure/high speed injection, the precision and the amount of trickery to deal with warp and cooling are a lifetime of study.

I never quite realized just how much work goes into making molds until I saw it up close, those are very complex devices, far more complex than I ever imagined. Part of the reasons for using EDM rather than regular machining is probably the finish, the precision and the hardness scale of the materials used.

You might enjoy this:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRRDIFNxoM

I worked for a company that built CNC conversion rigs and I never really lost the bug for metalworking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is mis-titled, its a survey of what 3D printing is currently good for vs what it isn't good for. It notes that it's not good for punching out billions of simple parts.

The article is written for investors who are looking for the 'next big thing' and gives some interesting metrics for when 3D printing is worth investing in, vs now when it is a niche. Similar to other stories we've talked about here, the 3D revolution is coming in 2020 not today.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like the same old saw that the computer cognoscenti said about desktop computers. From my point of view, I don't give a damn about any of their quibbles---they are either no longer a problem or subject to on-going R&D. What I want is something that allows me to proto-type my ideas. Plastic of any sort is just fine for testing. If it works, I can consider small production runs in the material of my choice. Good heavens, I can even have it cast in gold or sterling silver if I want :) This technology allows me to move from day-dream to reality. If the 'industry' scoffs let them, I'll be busy hacking away...

<comment><USER16> I've been talking to Josef Prusa and Kliment about going from print to cast. There's a few other guys who exactly that. The 2 makers' suggestions are to cast using natural PLA. It burns off the cleanest of all the current plastics.

Along with that, I am very interested in Prusa's print head. It will be able to print PEEK, nylon, polycarbonate, and other hotter (and noxious outgassing) plastics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps 3D printing will never be quite as fast, but it won't end up mattering very much? The article did alude to one possibility - that demand for mass customizability would alleviate any speed disadvantages.

A practical example might be: Let's say I need some chairs. I can go down to Ikea and pick up one of 5 mass produced chairs they have and be done with it in half a day. Or I could browse through designs and reviews online, pick something I like and have it arrive a week and a half later when it's done printing (or have my neighbourhood or home printer take that long...)

<comment><USER18> A bigger advantage for 3D printing has more to do with onsite, personal manufacturing, of which "mass customization" is a secondary benefit.

Many of the objections the industry insiders use to describe additive printing are more or less the same arguments people have made about homebrew computing, back before the Steve Wozniac showed off the Apple I and IBM got into the game. Why would you use personal computer? They are slower than the minicomputers and mainframes. They are "craft" machines for hobbyists.

Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product. If it is for something larger or requires more exotic materials, you might place a print order at the neighborhood Kinko's, Ace's Hardware, or print co-opt.

<comment><USER19> _Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product._

Speaking for myself, I don't want to live in a future where you've done what it's going to take to enforce those licenses.

<comment><USER18> Generally, I think ubiquitous, cheap, personal manufacturing is a good thing. _If_ we have a number of Open Source products we can print out. That will substantially lower the cost of living for everyone. Hopefully, the vast majority of retailers will turn into service providers.

There may still be folks who want to license designs out.

Nobody trusts a corporation to enforce their DRM mechanism because they get to be the final arbiter of what is "fair". What is fair is always good for the corporation, never mind the user. They may die and kill off access to those goods. The other extreme is hypocritical, simply because we run our digital goods through hardware -- all resting on the notion of allocation of resources. Besides, content creators want to eat, too.

A reasonable compromise is to have the DRM enforced by someone other than the seller. An escrow service is an improvement, but is not much better. And no one wants to depend on the government to host DRM servers. A peer-to-peer DRM might work. Bitcoin is an example of a technology that can be modified for this: [http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with- bit...](http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bitcoin/)

The mediation is done peer-to-peer. You can, for example, sign a bitcoin contract saying you are lending an ebook to a friend, and have it published elsewhere. Granted, this would all be on an honor system -- if you can play back media, then you have access to the content, no amount of clever algorithms or coding can change that -- but so is much of the enforcement for civilized interaction. A small group will "cheat", the same way there are breakage in a retail store. If the voluntary participation of such a scheme benefits everyone involved and is not too inconvenient (centralized DRM servers that crash or gets taken down when the company dies, or requires a constant internet connection), I think most people will go for it.

It's best we experiment this kind of transaction with digital products, _before_ 3D technologies get good enough that people start buying design licenses for goods.

Better yet, we make sure we have Open Source versions of products that people can download and print out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I dont think this article, which is interesting, is about what it says it is about. I don't think anyone seriously expects 3d printing to replace mass production any time soon, but i do see it as part of a series of related trends:

We need fewer, smaller physical things, and less stuff, to enjoy life. My new TV is has a larger screen and weighs less than its predecessor, and even so is largely redundant given i have an ipad. I used to need a laptop and a desktop computer, a games console, and so forth. Most or these now gather dust. I dont need a dedicated "movie" room, so i need less space and less furniture. And so on.

When we do want things, we often want them highly customized. Consider the insane variety of phone cases selling in popup stores all over the place.

I suggest to the author that anyone poo-pooing 3d printing today is in the exact same boat as, say, hot metal typesetters looking down on photo- typesetting and laser printers for their comparatively low quality back in, say, 1985. First they lost their low end customers, then all their customers, and then the people who had replaced them lost most of their customers (ok that's in progress).

<comment><USER21> > We need fewer, smaller physical things, and less stuff, to enjoy life.

This isn't an axiom. It's a personal preference. Don't imagine it applies to everyone else.

<comment><USER20> I don't think it's an axiom, i think it's a consequence of convergence. I used to own a camera, a video camera, a personal organizer, a landline phone, a cell phone, a discman, a gameboy, etc. I now have all these things in one device that's smaller and lighter than any of them used to be.

<comment><USER21> > I used to own a camera, a video camera, a personal organizer, a landline > phone, a cell phone, a discman, a gameboy, etc. I now have all these things > in one device that's smaller and lighter than any of them used to be.

And it isn't as good of a camera as a modern dedicated camera is. In fact, it might not even be as good as the camera you replaced it with, especially when it comes to ergonomics. Similarly, a dedicated gaming device often has better ergonomics for gaming than trying to play the same games on a phone.

I understand convergence. I understand satisficing. I also understand why people still make SLRs, and it isn't just to keep dust out of the various lenses. If you really want a good camera, you aren't going to be fully satisfied with a phone that has a megapixel count. The gaming world is more fluid because games themselves can adapt to new hardware and interface styles, but specific games often really do go better when you have buttons as opposed to a touch screen.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing>

And, finally, my little quirk: I refuse to believe that decluttering is a valid end in itself. Having a closet full of stuff I enjoy owning isn't a personal failing or a personality flaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems obvious. A generic solution can _do_ everything, but there's no reason to expect it would be the _best_ at anything; a specialised, single- function machine can always beat a 3D printer for performance, for the simple reason that printers have traded away performance for versatility. And in software, abstraction gives you flexibility while _degeneralisation_ gives you efficiency. It's the same old story.

<comment><USER12> " a specialised, single-function machine can always beat a 3D printer for performance"

But there is no more specialized thing than a 3d printer. You can print glasses for your face, not for a general model of faces but for your unique face, your specific sizes in all dimensions.

Getting to performance on the big machines is cost prohibitive for lots of things because you need big runs.

<comment><USER22> You misunderstand my use of the term "specialised". A 3D printer can print _anything_ , barring some of the limitations outlined in the article. Most machines are intended to serve much more specific functions, and do so with great efficiency: I can print a hole in any shape I like, but if all I want is a hole, why shouldn't I just use a drill press?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The primary objection to 3D printing in the article seems to be about speed in transforming raw materials into a finished product, but that's not the only thing that needs to happen to sell a product.

The entire process is:

1\. Transform raw materials into a finished product

2\. Transport product from factory to store or warehouse

3\. Transport product from store or warehouse to customer's home

Looking at it like this, it seems to me that the speed of 3D printing relative to other ways to transform raw materials into a finished product is irrelevant.

What really matters is the speed of 3D printing relative to other ways to transport the product from the store or warehouse to the customer's home. In other words, how long does UPS/FedEx take to deliver or how long does it take to visit the local mall?

</comment><comment><USER24> 3D printing is disruptive, not to industrial manufacturing, but to the retail value-chain. As mail-order is currently disrupting retail, 3D printing will disrupt both retail and mail-order.

"Ink" will be sold as a commodity at supermarkets/gas stations (perhaps eventually piped directly as a utility, like gas or water - though our consumption would need to increase dramatically to justify that).

Profits will be made on product design, and the industry will look just like the downloadable information-based industries of today: software/games/music/movies/education/news. Some business models will be a service related to the product, not the product itself. Although long-tail diversification will be possible, it mostly will be be dominated by a few products and corporations (due to the same factors as today: concentration of resources, quality assurance of trademarks, wish for community support (e.g. SO questions), marketing reach and herd mentality). Although initially suppliers will be diverse, the industry will soon consolidate - the same pattern as every other new technology.

Components that can't be 3D printed - e.g. silicon - will become addable modules (a cheap commodity, bought like screws/nails/pet-food pellets that you add to the hopper). Designs will modularize around this interface.

There'll be open source versions too - also consolidated, for the above reasons, as they are today.

</comment><comment><USER25> All of these "bullet points" about 3d printing sound suspiciously like people 30 years ago talking about why personal computing wasn't going to be a big deal. Makes me believe in it even more.

</comment><comment><USER26> Looking at the bigger picture, it's fun to see the Hype Curve in action. 3D Printing is just passing the peak of the first hill of the curve. So we should expect the hype/expectations to drop quickly for a while, bottom out and stay low for a couple of years, then recover to a useful level where it will stay.

All part of the cycle.

</comment><comment><USER27> As a layman, I thought the main issue with 3D printing was the material (the article only briefly mentions this). Plastic goes a long way, but still, when I look at almost non-trivial thing around me, I tend to see more-than-just- plastic.

</comment><comment><USER28> Same comments were made by printshop owners when Apple introduced the first Laserwriter. Sure indication of the big guys well on their way to being referred to as dinosaurs.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wonder if there will be elemental composites akin to RGB with 3d printing (e.g. rubber/metal/plastic -- layman's thinking) to which [most] all things can be created?

</comment><comment><USER30> I consider 3D printing to be mature technology once a 3D printer can clone itself! I bet at that point von Neumann smiles in his grave for self- replicating systems.

<comment><USER31> I may be wrong, but there are a few problems with a self-replicating printer of this type:

\- The size of the stage determines the largest size of part that can be printed. The stage is necessarily smaller than the largest part of the printer.

\- The print head has to have a melting point greater than the material being printed. Meaning it can't be made of the material being printed.

RepRap is a project with the state goal of creating a self-printing machine like this. But looking at the current designs, they mostly stick together common materials with some 3-D printed bits. This is much more attainable and useful than really being able to recursively print a new machine, because the common parts are produced at scale through existing channels and are stronger/cheaper than the machine-printed parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Achille's Heel of 3D printing: it isn't tomorrow yet.

</comment><comment><USER33> Few of these downsides are actually fundamental, most of them will change dramatically as technology changes.

Will 3D printing be the foundation of 21st century manufacturing? Almost certainly not. But will the fundamental techniques drive a revolution in manufacturing and become key elements in next-generation fully automated, fast-turnaround, fully configurable manufacturing? Probably.

<comment><USER34> The list is also padded pretty heavily. In reality, something has a killer app or it doesn't. 3D printing's weaknesses in speed and materials don't seem likely to go away any time soon, and in fact they seem intertwined in a way—faster printing would seem to require ever more specialized materials. It's obviously an exciting technology that will carve out a few niches, but I don't see what all the hype is about.</comment></comment>


Why Boredom Is an Entrepreneur's Superpower - <AUTHOR> https://anthonydike.substack.com/p/create-more-than-you-consume?r=2wdpn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy <comment><USER2> That's exactly how I start my company, playing game (brain-dead), get bored and then work ! The idea is simple, we can all concentrate hard only a percentage of the day and we should not lose it on thing that doesn't achieve any purpose, or just enough to get bored.

</comment><comment> o-__-o Welp, no more HN for today. See y'all with my new product on Monday

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahah, that's the spirit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great sentiment, I think I would add to it "create more like a chef than a cook" when possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very inspiring, well done Anthony!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Long Strange Trip to Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/javaorigin.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the most interesting, most awe inspiring accounts of hacking war stories you will ever read. Well worth your time.</comment>


$30/year flat rate for shipping flowers - <AUTHOR> http://ww31.1800flowers.com/primeemail.do

<comment><USER2> Its Amazon Prime for flowers. After seeing this, I went to Amazon and searched for Roses, apparently I don't need 1800Flowers. [http://www.amazon.com/12-Long-Stem-Red- Roses/dp/B00E45RBSG/r...](http://www.amazon.com/12-Long-Stem-Red- Roses/dp/B00E45RBSG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392680993&sr=8-1&keywords=roses)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ideal if you do a lot of apologising ;) or maybe if you send corporate flowers often. But as matthewarkin points out you could just get these with AmazonPrime too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Charming a site that uses images for text.

<comment><USER4> That is weird. I guess blind people don't send flowers.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's radical 4th-generation datacenter design - <AUTHOR> http://loosebolts.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/our-vision-for-generation-4-modular-data-centers-one-way-of-getting-it-just-right/

<comment><USER2> I would hate to be the person swapping HDD in that environment. I can't help but wonder how much savings you get by building that type of data center. Let's say you are averaging around 500$ PC's per square foot a data center floor. Is not building a roof really going to save that much cash to pay for the increase in failure rate? I think building a wallmart style building with highly custom duckt work would end up using less material on walls and let you add more redundancy to the ventilation system even if you are just venting in outside air.

<comment><USER3> I don't think these kinds of facilities swap hard drives. If one fails, you have others. By the time a lot of them fail, the whole container is probably obsolete anyway... you swap it out for a new one shipped from wherever they're manufactured.

Why would you get increased failure rate without the roof? Shipping containers are designed to be weatherproof.

One of the the biggest advantages with the containers is that you can manufacture entire containers of servers wherever it's cheapest and ship them anywhere in the world for about $3000. Think how much you save on the labor of racking up servers if you can do it in China. The server never has to see the inside of a cardboard box, either.

<comment><USER2> You could be right, but I don't think you can completely separate your CPU, Motherboard, and RAM. If they are each 50$ and one fails then replacing a 50$ component will rescue two 50$ components which is a net gain if it cost's less than 100$ in manpower to do the swap. Without temperature control the failure rate will increase some. I guess they could work on a 3 month cycle and move the container to a nearby repair location. Thinking about it there is probably some interesting trade offs depending on the local labor supply etc. But giving up the ability to repair PC's is a significant cost.

In the US 400,000 square feet of warehouse is around $19/square foot and you could avoid weatherproof all those containers and electric cables. You could also use larger more efficient fan's to move all that hot air. And you could use the space for other reasons if you don't want to use that land just for a data center. Unlike this custom building which is going to be hard to use for other things.

 _Why would you get increased failure rate without the roof?_ Bugs, animals, and weather, combined with a defective container. Then again if they only need to last 3 years the failure rate is probably going to be low.

PS: I think of a rack as 100k+ worth of equipment that lasts for 3 years that has a vary small footprint and uses a lot of energy. But, when you start building data centers like MS or Google I guess the buildings start becoming expensive on their own.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't bugs and weather also be a problem if you had a defective building?

<comment><USER2> I think this is a defense in depth issue, with large walls to cut down on wind you can use really simple roof over what you want to protect and you end up with a strong defense vs rain, wind, and snow. When the outside is 1 foot from your equipment a 1 in 1000 fault becomes a problem, but you can use two 1 in 50 solutions to end up with better protection if the failures don't cascade. (1/50 * 1/50 = 1/2500.)

PS: A friend built some really cheep rooms using plastic and plywood inside an old barn that had large gaps in the walls but an OK roof to protect his record collection on the cheep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "A highly modular, scalable, efficient, just-in-time data center capacity program that can be delivered anywhere in the world very quickly and cheaply, while allowing for continued growth as required."

that was their "1 sentence explanation" Buzzword Buzzword Buzzword...

\- also reading this made me wonder why microsoft hasn't launched a blog product yet... (if they have sorry ;( haven't seen it)

<comment><USER6> <http://spaces.live.com> provides a Microsoft-branded and run blogging service.</comment></comment>


A new app allows blind people to listen to an audio readback of printed text - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/20/apple-blind-app-idINKBN0HF08S20140920 <comment><USER3> As a totally blind user I won't buy this app. There isn't that much printed material I need to deal with now and there are $5 apps that will generally let me get good enough oCR to determine what junk mail I am getting. I would pay the $99 if it were an in app purchase and the app was limited to say 5 scans a month but with no trial type thing I will not be buying it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Watching the promotional video[1] of the iPhone app, the one question that springs to mind is how the blind people know how to orient their phone to the objects shown in the video. For instance, reading the hours a store is open: there is no standard place to put that signage, so how likely is this use case to be applied in real world scenarios?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao)

<comment><USER5> Many people who are classified as blind have some kind of vision perception — just very, very degraded compared to "normal" vision. So while they might not be able to read, they would be able to at least make educational guesses as to where text might be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of other similar apps - particularly ones supporting more languages? Specifically - <USER2>

Would be an awesome gift for my grandfather whose vision has deteriorated significantly due to age. He is 90+, so most of the documents he is actually interested in reading are printed or even hand-written. We've been able to teach him to use an iPad and the built-in voiceover functionality is great for helping read the books/newspapers we pre-load on the device. However it doesn't help much with printed documents - or even just reading the newspaper.

Something like this app really would be a game changer (assuming it's intuitive to use), however it looks like their current language support is only limited to the following: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a fairly clever idea, it combines "Google Goggles" instant OCR with instant text-to-speech, to make the phone read out what the camera is seeing.

The one worry i have is that, since modern phones have no tactile input (nevermind feedback), it means a blind person will have a cellphone for the single purpose of being a mobile OCR-reader. Can people with actual experience maybe weigh in on this?

Also, holy damn, i wish it were illegal for journalists to lie in their titles.

<comment><USER8> This may surprise you, but I am a totally blind iPhone user and have been for about 4 years. Before this, I owned a series of Nokia devices, the 6682, N95, etc. Previously, on the s60 devices, we had to purchase a $350 screen reader to make the phone talk. Now, on any iPhone running iOS 4 or later, (so... all of them) I can press the home button 3 times, or just ask Siri to turn on VoiceOver, and I am instantly granted the same level of access to the device that my sighted colleagues expect. Apple is seriously amazing in terms of accessibility -- all of their built-in apps are 100% accessible, all controls labeled, all custom interaction elements given clear accessible descriptions/access tips. Search on YouTube for blind people using the iPhone/iPad, I expect it will blow your mind. Even more awesome than the iPhone's built-in accessibility is the fact that it's so easy for 3rd party developers to make their own apps accessible. All native controls are accessible by default, all you need do as a developer is add labels. For custom controls, such as chess boards, Apple provides an incredibly powerful accessibility API, allowing developers to enable access for anything. I personally play Shredder Chess on the iPhone as the developer has explicitly enabled accessibility for it. There are real blind people using these devices, and I hope you consider this the next time you are thinking about how accessibility fits/doesn't into your next project.

<comment><USER9> What's your number one recommendation for mobile app developers in terms of enhancing (or not screwing up) accessibility?

If you're feeling extra ambitious, I'd love to hear the same advice with respect to web apps. Has HTML5 made a big difference in terms of accessibility? Are there any obvious big wins for accessibility that most of us are missing?

Thanks for your awesome comment!

<comment><USER10> I say this as a sighted dev, but I used to volunteer to teach computer basics and programming to visually impaired folks and related things. Feel free to sub in a lot of the visual impairment-specific stuff with other disabilities too, deafness being another big one.

* Learn to use a screenreader and just play with your app/website. Voiceover has a screen curtain you can enable so you don't have the temptation to peek. * Read accessibility documentation for best practices (iOS: [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/iPhoneAccessibility/Accessibility_on_iPhone/Accessibility_on_iPhone.html) Android: [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/i...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/index.html) Web (a decent start, I forget the better ones right now cause it's been a while): [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility)) * A lot of times, making your app easier and simpler for new users to use (i.e. ux improvements) will have the side benefit of making it more accessible and vice versa ;) * Reach out to blind users if you have any, and ask them for tips and problems. * When you get someone reaching out to you about how inaccessible something is, work with them to fix it if you can (you'd be surprised....) * Check out your local groups/conferences/hackathons, I've seen some great projects needing help and lots of people sharing their knowledge on this front (one that comes to mind is Yahoo Accessibility down in LA in the past when I used to live there)

Sometimes even I fuck up on this front, and it's definitely a constant checking-your-privileges and rethinking things battle. The one thing that keeps me going is this: there will be times where all of us will benefit from accessibility, even if it's not a permanent or big problem. I try to do what I can on this front for my own work/hobbies, hoping it helps someone else. And I thank the person that had the foresight to reserve the front buses on seats for people with disabilities because I need it right now. :P

<comment><USER9> >* Learn to use a screenreader and just play with your app/website.

Excellent advice. I'll start testing my sites with a screenreader in addition to IE8 and all other other usual suspects. I also just found a cool toolkit for Bootstrap 3 (I use Bootstrap a lot):

[https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/01/28/bootstrap- acce...](https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/01/28/bootstrap- accessibility-plugin-making-the-popular-web-development-framework-better/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sipen Online Shopping Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.sipen.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I have created this site for the purpose of allowing people to sell and buy products online easily. I am still tweaking the appearance of the site, and there are still quite a few features (basic features even) that I need to add, but I would like some initial feedback from people that are best suited to give it to me (other than the customers.)

Please let me know what you think.

Also, if you want to sell anything at no charge, simply sign up and use GRANDOPEN100 as the promotional code. (All uppercase) This code will give you up to 100 inventory slots, no listing fees, no monthly fees, no commission fees, no transaction fees, etc. until March 1, 2010. (No fees whatsoever until then.) The code expires December 31, 2009 so use it before then if you want to test it.</comment>


Training a real robot to play Puckworld with reinforcement learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.declanoller.com/2019/03/27/training-a-real-robot-to-play-puckworld-with-reinforcement-learning/ <comment><AUTHOR> I trained a robot to learn to play the game "puckworld" using RL (Q learning with experience replay, using pytorch). I had done some RL stuff before, but didn't appreciate how hard it could be getting something physical to work for the timescales necessary to do RL.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback!</comment>


Leaving Google - <AUTHOR> http://blog.douweosinga.com/2011/05/leaving-google.html <comment><USER2> Google is indeed a tightly walled garden. Hackers & Founders has been holding events 4 or 5 miles away from Google headquarters in Mountain View for several years. And, out of their 25,000 employees. We only get a handful of engineers that show up. And when they arrive, they quickly realize that H&F involves having a beer or two and geeking out about startups. The Googlers often can't geek out because of heavy NDA's, and are very concerned about loose lips after having a beer or two. So, they often stop showing up.

I've also been stunned at how few Googlers I come across are working on startups part time. Those that I find are workign on something on the side are very hush-hush about it, because of non-compete stuff. (It's hard to work on a software startup that doesn't directly compete with your parent company, when your parent companies mission is to organize the world's information).

Finally, I stopped by Google Ventures this week for a "Get to know Hackers & Founders" chat, like I've had at dozens of other VC's the past few months. Google Ventures was the _only_ VC that presented me with an NDA on sign in (via kiosk). The kiosk wanted me to sign a "I will never, ever talk about what I might learn about Google inside these walls" before got a name badge or got buzzed in the door.

I walked out before my meeting with the VC. If they are that concerned about what I might learn.... I don't want to know. There's a couple hundred VC's in town that I can talk to without having to sign or decline and NDA.

So, GOOG, there's reasons you're getting the "Google is the new Evil Empire" meme attached to you.

Frankly, Microsoft has been orders of magnitude more helpful to startups at H&F than Google, and we've been meeting within spitting distance of GOOG for 3 years. The BizSpark team has been fantastic to work with, and are helpful to startups whether or not they're on the MicroSoft stack or not.

<comment><USER3> I suspect I'm one of those Googlers who used to go but stopped showing up. :-)

Anyway, I think your perception is basically accurate, at least in my limited experience. Google is the wrong place to go if you're interested in working on a startup on the side. Between the draconian "all your IP are belong to us", the intellectual demands of your day job, and the numerous opportunities to try out interesting side projects under the Google umbrella, the path of least resistance is usually just to do your side-projects as Google-owned 20% time.

It _can_ be a good place to learn a whole bunch of technical, leadership, and product skills and _then_ do a startup. Google's quite a bit more open internally than most big companies, so you're exposed to a lot more than you would be at another large corporation, and possibly even more than in a startup. There are specialists in performance, accessibility, internationalization, security, and all these other tricky corners that startups typically muddle through, and the quality of documentation on how to handle those is much better than you'll generally find on the web. You get daily experience with scaling, such that thinking about how to build scalable solutions becomes second-nature. You're often directly involved in product decisions, and can see how your choice fare in the real world. You have a wide variety of hard UX data at your fingertips; much of this is cutting edge applied psychology, and isn't available anywhere else.

I think we're starting to see a trickle of Xooglers leaving the mothership and founding their own things. I know at least 6 of them personally, plus there're posts like this blog entry. In general, I think this is a very good thing for the Valley startup ecosystem, just like how Fairchild spawned almost all of Silicon Valley in the 60s, and Xerox PARC spawned much of the rest of the modern computer industry in the 70s.

It's kinda ironic that Google is totally open for users, but is a walled garden for employees. Meanwhile, Facebook is a walled garden for users, but is relatively open about letting employees publish and open-source infrastructure. (Actually, that's perhaps an unfair comparison: Google is also really open about letting employees open-source infrastructure, the problem is that Google culture tends to result in re-use of core proprietary infrastructure, such that when it comes time to open-source the software, it's impossible to disentangle from the parts that definitely can't be open- sourced.) Meanwhile, Microsoft is now relatively open for both employees _and_ users, but is a walled-garden for _developers_.

<comment><USER2> What can I say, we miss ya :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "[Google's culture] has led to many innovations - from the search first homepage, to the NoSql movement, powering webmail by Ajax ..."

C'mon now. Outlook Web Access and Oddpost used Ajax-like technologies for webmail long before GMail's first line had been coded.

Also, while BigTable certainly has had some influence on NoSQL, I find it difficult to credit Google with the entire movement considering how long these types of DBs have been around. Petabyte-scaled high performance DB storage? Maybe. NoSQL? Nope.

<comment><USER5> This is more common than most folks seem to think. I've noticed the curious delusion in talking to acquaintances where ABMers who stridently complain about Microsoft innovations and tools insist that XHR "doesn't count because Google made it popular."

When gently informed (not reminded--most of the ones I know have never touched Outlook in their lives) that Outlook Web Access was the reason XHR was _invented_ , the response so far has invariably been "but that doesn't count, because it's Microsoft."

I somewhat chalk it up to the "cool factor" that surrounds Google, but a good part of it may just be ignorance.

<comment><USER3> I think it was actually Google Maps that made XHR popular, not GMail. With GMail, people figured that the AJAX-interactivity was cool, but not groundbreaking. With Maps, it opened up fundamentally new interaction models that didn't exist before.

This is somewhat ironic, since Maps didn't use XHR at all, and instead used an iframe transport. For that matter, "AJAX"-enabled Google Search also uses an iframe and contains no XML. Monikers are weird.

<comment><USER6> A draggable tiled map doesn't require XHR _or_ iframes. It's a bunch of img tags next to each other, and some JavaScript that sets their src and position.

<comment><USER3> The other interactions do, though, eg. the results changing as you drag the map.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part 1: <http://blog.douweosinga.com/2011/05/leaving-google.html>

Part 2: [http://blog.douweosinga.com/2011/05/leaving-google- part-2.ht...](http://blog.douweosinga.com/2011/05/leaving-google-part-2.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is not news. Google's got 20,000 employees. Statiscally, every day a non- famous googler leaves Google. And that post doesn't tell us anything about Google that we didn't already know.

<comment><USER8> I believe they had 20,000 employees few years back. Now it should be much more, if not twice that.

<comment><USER9> I spoke to a googler and she told me they were 25K at the beginning of the year and looking to hire 20% more...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, who needs to justify leaving a job after 7 years? Good read though and the author's new business looks cool. Although I often repeat and work for the same bosses again, I have always tried to work no more than 1 to 3 years with a group/team/company. Now, with a large company like Google (similar in size to SAIC where I was for 20 years, off and on), switching teams/divisions, etc. helps mix up the work experience but still getting fresh jobs is simply a good life strategy. BTW, It is easy enough to maintain long term friendships even if you don't work with people anymore.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been following douweosinga's blog since before he joined Google, interesting to see he's moving on. Part 2 is a little more interesting than the first.

He linked to this, though, which I didn't know about, and seems at first glance to be very useful and neat: <http://sharedspaces.googlelabs.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Why do people bash so much about the company when they are leaving ? Is it they want to become famous all of sudden ? Why don't people accept that big companies won't be like the same company when it got started.

<comment><USER3> I was talking to a friend who works at Yahoo today. She's feeling terribly overworked and unproductive mostly because of some boneheaded organizational practices. I don't know the full story, but it sounds like she has pretty much accepted that management is brain-dead.

At Google, there's a culture that if something is broken, _call it out_ so that it can be fixed. At best, you will save thousands of employees hundreds of hours. At worst, you'll learn _why_ it's broken. Many problems are inherent in running a large company, and there is no easy fix for them. But many others have simple solutions that make everyone's lives better.

The way I see it (and this is completely my personal opinion here, _not_ speaking for Google), he and other Xooglers who've written posts like this are being Googley. You don't work for seven years at a company without absorbing some of the culture, and that culture doesn't simply leave when you hand in your badge. Posts like this are not all that different from something you would see on internal Buzz or mailing lists, and I think the spirit of them is not to "bash" Google, but to call out things that Google could improve upon even after the Xoogler has left.

<comment><USER13> Bash? No. Try to fix? Absolutely.

Ever watch a friend slowly slip away? They change from something you knew to something unrecognizable. You have to at least try to do something about it.

<comment><USER14> Speaking as an ex-Yahoo!, I have to say that with a company that big, with that many external commercial deals, and that many layers of management: effecting change as you see it is so non-trivial as to odds-on be a waste of your time. Additionally, trying and failing is actually quite demoralising.

<comment><USER3> I do think it's significantly more difficult at Yahoo than at Google. Google has a very much bottom-up culture. If you want to try something different, get the support of your manager and peers, and then just go do it. If it turns out to work significantly better, people in other parts of the organization will notice, and copy it. Pretty soon the whole company will be doing it whether or not Larry blesses it.

The introduction - and then pervasiveness - of unit tests was one such change that basically took over Google culture despite the ambivalence of the founders. People found they could simply move faster when they had confidence in their code, they started sharing the knowledge of how to write better tests, and eventually it simply became the accepted thing to do. (Interestingly, the testing intergrouplet failed several times before they struck on a bottom-up approached that worked. As with everything, persistence is important inside big companies too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On a side note, Triposo looks pretty good. There are some problems with the wikipedia text sometimes being in the city's native language though. I'm not sure if maybe that's how the page was when you scraped it.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an honest Hosting Review Site? - <AUTHOR>

I know I can scour the forums and HN for host recommendations but that just seems ridiculous. Is there a website out there that is 100% fair for hosting reviews?<p>I've decided that if there isn't one. I'm going to make it. <comment><USER2> This question has come up in one form or another in past threads. I'll answer here the same as always:

<http://www.webhostingtalk.com>

It is a forum of data-center and webhosting nerds who really take pride in their work. I use it as a resource for deciding where to put my projects.

I'm a non-premium member there and am always surprised at the quality of answers and insights I get from members.</comment>


Julian Assange as Times 2010 Person of the year  - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2028734_2029036_2029037,00.html

<comment><USER2> That's some fine company to be a part of: Lady Gaga, Beck, Obama, Robert Gates(!), Unemployed Americans, lol. What a joke. Assange should be partying with Rumsfeld and Miley Cyrus. I think we're all being played by this dubious character, Assange.</comment>


Scientists discover how to change leukemia cells into harmless immune cells - <AUTHOR> http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/scientists-discover-how-to-change-human-leukemia-cells.html

<comment><USER2> In related news, leukemia is also under attack by nanobots:

[http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/ido-bachelet-dna- nanobots-s...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/ido-bachelet-dna-nanobots- summary-with.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> cool. My [internet-based] understanding is that the more aggressive the cancer the less differentiated the cells are. Interesting to speculate that if not outright cure, forcing cells down the differentiation path can at least lead to decreasing of the aggressiveness or slowing progression of the cancer.</comment>


The Patent Office Can't Ignore Law It Dislikes - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/patent-office-cant-ignore-law-it-dislikes <comment><USER2> Haven't we all learned in the age of Trump that laws mean absolutely nothing if no one enforces them?

And that selective enforcement is basically the norm?

<comment><USER3> In patent cases, if one wants to pursue it far enough, it winds up at the Supreme Court. They seem to be perfectly happy to slap down the Patent Office and the Federal Circuit. It is beyond Trump's ability to decide whether the Supreme Court will continue to enforce the laws.

Unfortunately, that's a really slow and expensive process...</comment></comment>


Show HN: SSD-based Cloud for Startup Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.ssdnodes.com

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

I'm a student finishing up my computer science and piano performance degrees at Chapman University in Orange, California. I started SSD Nodes as a summer project last year, created as a solution to the pain of all the other slow/unsecure/unreliable hosts out there.

SSD Nodes was accepted into the Startup Incubator's first class a few months ago at Chapman. I've been working with absolutely wonderful entrepreneurs that have been helping me guide my vision. Being on HN for the past ~6 months have been invaluable.

I would love to hear your thoughts. If you want to contact me directly, my email is in my profile.

<http://twitter.com/MattGConnor></comment>


Craft Beer Is the Strangest, Happiest Economic Story in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/craft-beer-industry/550850/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Summary: benevolent regulation caused the craft beer boom. I call bullshit. Look at this graph [1] and tell me again how great the three-tier system was for market diversity. America went from 700 post-Prohibition breweries to less than 100 in 1978. That was the year homebrewing was legalized, and it's a pretty steady climb back up from there. Brewpubs -- which circumvent the three-tier system and its all-too-easily-locked-up distribution channels -- were legalized in the early 80s and exploding by the late 90s.

I must however agree that this is a happy development. "Beer Wars" is a great little documentary about the phenomenon. [2]

[1] [https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-total-number-of-breweries-in- the...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-total-number-of-breweries-in-the-u-s- from-1887-to-512405715)

[2] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326194/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326194/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

<comment><USER3> It's not just that there was a three-tier system, but I would argue that in this particular case, it was the legalization of homebrewing that was the gateway into the innovation.

Early 80's and 90's homebrewers were essentially hackers [1], doing things at very small scales, and branching far out into experimental recipes and techniques. I'm sure there was innovation in distribution and retail over the last 40 years, but definitely nowhere near the scale of the actual brewers.

Without homebrewing, you don't get the wave of 80's self/indie hackers interested in the first place. So yeah, I could believe the author was right, without the three-tier system the little amount of innovation in brewing couldn't overthrow the total amount needed to also take over distribution and retail.

Maybe the analogy would be the first touch phones, or what Tesla is doing now with EVs.

1\. [https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-founder-of-dogfish-head-on- flout...](https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-founder-of-dogfish-head-on- flouting-a-500-year-old-beer-law)

<comment><USER2> > it was the legalization of homebrewing that was the gateway into the > innovation.

I'm with you on this part. It's hard to imagine the boom happening while tinkering was outright illegal! Also, surely the 58 year gap (1920-1978) caused some generational loss of knowledge. The homebrewers of the 80s and 90s must have started from scratch in many ways.

> without the three-tier system the little amount of innovation in brewing > couldn't overthrow the total amount needed to also take over distribution > and retail.

Watch "Beer Wars" and you'll see craft brewers with promising products struggling to get shelf space. The problems started for them even before the shelves: they needed to get into existing distributor's trucks, and by this stage of the three-tier game, tier 3 (breweries) had captured tier 2 (distributors). Why exactly would you let an upstart competitor onto "your" truck?

What's surprising to me is that craft brewers found a way! They succeeded not because of the three-tier system, as this article posits, but in spite of it. I'd love to hear how.

PS. You cite an article by the Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione. In "Beer Wars" he recounts the story of how he started an illegal brewery in Rhode Island, then (because the state was small enough and he knew someone who knew someone) managed to get a law passed to legalize brewing.

<comment><USER3> I would like to know too, if it really is some odd phenomena that everyone so far is missing.

If I had to pin it to any one guess, I would maybe go with imports. Beer imports were always around to some extent, but it was also the way that consumers got the other tastes they couldn't find at the football game.

In fact, if I had to think back to when I was a kid, there was always that one uncle who enjoyed drinking imports over typical 'domestic', and maybe that 90's uncle is basically the same person today as a craft-IPA drinking millennial. Distributors accommodate more imports as brands get acquired, and maybe that's the gateway. I suppose you could look at the data of brands changing over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love craft beer and I am glad my 125K city has 5 of them, but /r/starterpacks was dead on with this one: [https://i.redd.it/fio3hqlmuofy.jpg](https://i.redd.it/fio3hqlmuofy.jpg)

I will be confused if I ever walk into a microbrewery that doesn't look like that!

<comment><USER5> Not to be overly contrarian but it does seem that we are getting close to the peak for the craft beer industry.

Smuttynose Brewery going up for auction is a great example of this. [https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/18/smuttynose-brewing- in...](https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/18/smuttynose-brewing-in-new- hampshire-to-be-sold-at-auction/)

Many areas are getting over-saturated with microbreweries and there eventually won't be enough demand to sustain them.

In retail, $10+ average price for a six pack, the even more offensive 4 pack of beer for the same price or more.

It's great to see this growth engine for jobs, and I personally love the amount of variety and innovation we are seeing in craft beer, I just wonder how long it will last until people are onto the next trend or until the industry gets so greedy that they kill the golden goose.

<comment><USER6> I agree the movement is likely nearing saturation on total number of microbreweries. However, $10 +/\- a few dollars, for a six pack, is not a problem. The mediocre old domestics cost $7 to $10 around most of the US. Paying more is perfectly fine for a superior tasting product. Product price scaling works that way in most consumer goods, it makes sense.

<comment><USER7> >The mediocre old domestics cost $7 to $10 around most of the US

No they don't, not even close. The beers you're referring to cost that for a _12_ pack. 6 packs are ~$5.50, and you can walk into a bar and get a draft old domestic for around $2.00. Wherever you're buying your e.g. Bud Light, it doesn't represent "most places".

<comment><USER8> _you can walk into a bar and get a draft old domestic for around $2.00_

Not in San Francisco.

<comment><USER7> Right, but MOST PLACES. Did you read what you were responding to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One interesting note: The article mentions Ronald Reagan's Justice Department's lax handling of antitrust regulations as leading to consolidation in the brewing industry, but the number of breweries was near its nadir before he was elected; in 1978 Jimmy Carter legalized home brewing, which was close to the very bottom in terms of number of breweries.

[https://vinepair.com/wp- content/themes/vpcontent/images/brew...](https://vinepair.com/wp- content/themes/vpcontent/images/brewery-interactive/historical-breweries.png)

<comment><USER10> That chart is from a broader article we published last winter: [https://vinepair.com/map-american-craft-brewing- history/](https://vinepair.com/map-american-craft-brewing-history/)

More recently we put together a visualization of the 1977 data at [https://vinepair.com/map-american-breweries-1977/](https://vinepair.com/map- american-breweries-1977/)

There's also a marked up breakdown by brewery from a 1978 FTC report below the visualization.

<comment><USER9> That 1978 FTC data is fascinating! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if marijuana will also be able to avoid being crushed and consolidated by monopolies. I don't think the cigarette industry was able to avoid it but I am not well versed on tobacco industry regulations.

My gut tells me that since at the end of the day marijuana is an agricultural commodity large players will come to dominate the market. But on the other hand there is a decent variety in strain types and flavors and with time you could see interesting strains being developed that have a uniqueness similar to craft beers.

<comment><USER12> One thing about beer that the article didn't touch on is that it's a fragile product which has its quality harmed by the standard supply chain. It's both temperature and light sensitive.

This makes many smaller producers compared to few large producers more attractive than in a more easily transported good eg. phones. One big factory with all of the quality standards and efficiency gains that allows works great for the iPhone, not so much beer.

I don't know enough about weed to be able to say where it falls on the fragility of product spectrum, but it's a factor worth considering and I'd be interested to hear from people who do know enough.

<comment><USER13> To me this actually makes me respect beers like Budweiser even more. They've managed to take a fairly temperamental style of beer, mass produce it in breweries spread around the world, and wind up with a product that is damn near uniform everywhere I've ever had it. It's not my preferred style, but I don't think I've ever had a truly bad one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has a bit of a distributist streak, it's really nice to see this.

There's a craft brewery near me, and I patronize it not because it's the best beer, but because it's pretty good, and I want to support the local business.

Craft breweries seem to be pretty good candidates for distributing the means of production. I'm speaking a bit out of ignorance, but it's not a lot of ingredients and it's not a huge deal to ship and store those ingredients, correct? There are more pieces to a cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato than a beer - and meat, cheese, and produce can be harder to consistently source and keep. And because craft is a pure luxury good, price isn't as big of an issue here is as it usually is when you talk about these things.

<comment><USER15> You are correct! It's a relatively small number of ingredients to make beer that can be shipped pretty easily. Grain, hops, yeast, water, an assortment of adjuncts.

The issues come in with the actual _means of production_ , rather than the material ingredients. Brewing is a rather technically complex task. It's not trivial to do reliably - ask any homebrewer about batches they've skunked. It also benefits significantly from economies of scale, as at scale there's a whole world of applicable chemicals production control technologies.

It's a lot like housing. It's relatively easy to ship around wood, wire, pipes, insulation, paint, and so on. Assembling them into a working and usable house is a smidge more complicated.

<comment><USER16> > It's a relatively small number of ingredients to make beer that can be > shipped pretty easily

Contrast that with the finished product. A hoppy IPA is at its best for a limited time, and that is shortened by exposure to light and heat. Other beer styles vary, but none last for ever. This favours local production, not storage and shipping.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. There's new container and storage tech used these days that can make any beer basically last forever. Get a fresh 'crowler' sometime.

<comment><USER16> I think one of the 2 local craft beer shops has those, for maybe 2 or 3 beers on keg. Compared to hundreds in cans and bottles.

The crowler is basically a can, and the likes of a Stone Enjoy By or a Brewdog Born to Die are not going to be the same forever, even in cold dark storage in a can. The aromatic oils in the hops change over the course of weeks. I have tasted that. They might still be edible, but tasty? Not for ever.

Even a 12% ABV Imperial stout can lose flavour in the bottle after 2 years or more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Large breweries ignored burgeoning niches, Watson said, particularly hoppy > India Pale Ales, or IPAs, which constitute a large share of the craft-beer > market.

He's reversing cause-and-effect.

IPAs are incredibly popular among microbrewers, because it is incredibly hard to brew consistently tasting batches of beer. Smothering all of a beer's other flavours, by dumping buckets after buckets of hops into it is much easier. It's why eight out of every ten craft beers are incredibly bitter IPAs.

I like craft beer as much as the next hipster, but I can't stand this trend.

<comment><USER18> That's nonsense. Craft breweries are businesses and they'll sell what makes money.

Also, IPAs are incredibly hard to brew, store, and distribute consistently. Hops are probably the most seasonal part of a mash bill, and high quality finishing hops are in heavy demand. And the hop acids are subject to spoilage by heat, light, or oxygen. If you want "smothering a beer's other flavors" then look no further than whiskey/rum/et al. barrel aging (and I'm not judging, whatever floats one's boat),

This isn't aimed _necessarily_ at you, but some people taste things differently. Cilantro, infamously. But hops are another. Maybe you don't like hops (or maybe you haven't had very good ipas?)

<comment><USER19> My favourite beer ever may have been a sour aged in a bourbon cask. It was one of those one-off brews that may never appear again.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.wickedweedbrewing.com/locations/funkatorium/](https://www.wickedweedbrewing.com/locations/funkatorium/) would be up your alley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the City of Vancouver there are five breweries in my somewhat industrial neighbourhood. In another nearby somewhat industrial neighbourhood there are another five. There several others scattered about in the nearby satellite municipalities.

A decade ago if you walked into a Vancouver liquor store that specialized in craft beer you'd find it mostly full of Seattle and Portland craft beers. Now you'd find the stock overwhelmingly dominated by high quality beer made within Metro Vancouver city limits.

We don't find it at all odd to find independent mom n' pop restaurants in every neighbourhood of every town, and I believe in the long term we'll find that every town of reasonable size will have a few mom n' pop breweries that largely serve the local populace.

</comment><comment><USER21> Very happy about the craft beer revolution in the US. Coming from the UK, we are used to an extremely wide range of beer in our regular pubs (thanks to decades of activism from CAMRA). If you ever visit the UK make sure you visit one. Years ago the only beer I could get in regular pubs in the US were Bud light, Coors etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems to be a case of beer crafting moving from a production economy to an 'heritage' economy.

In an 'heritage' economy, proximity, uniqueness and the story of the product matter more than the product itself. We have seen it happen in France for 'macaron', wine and cheese.

More on 'heritage' economy (in french) : [http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/NRF- Essais/Enric...](http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/NRF- Essais/Enrichissement)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's very hard for me to reconcile. I love what craft brewing has done for the industry. But it has gone to a ridiculous and antithetical place. The culture has more in common with wine than beer at this point. It is no longer an "Everyman" drink. Waiting in line for releases. $10 and $15 pours. It's a turnoff.

<comment><USER24> Why is this a bad thing? I have so many more options than the cheap beer I started drinking. The Everyman beer still exists and many people still drink it.

There are plenty of non $10 or $15 dollar pours to keep me happy. You don't have to wait for releases. I only participate in lottery systems for limited liquor releases, screw the lines.

<comment><USER25> Totally OT, but maybe someone in this thread knows why my favorite everyman beer (Busch) seems to not be sold in California.

<comment><USER26> Walmart claims to have it in stock at their store in Mountain View, so I'm guessing it's sold here. I haven't gone looking myself, but Anheuser-Busch certainly distributes their big brands in California. It's possible that Busch itself just isn't that popular out here by mass market standards, though?

<comment><USER25> Ah, so does the closest wal-mart to me; they definitely didn't have it last time I was in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I, for one, absolutely hate the craft beer revolution in the U.S.; a lot of restaurants are changing out their taps of beers that are universally liked for craft beers. It's basically impossible to get a Stella or Heineken on tap now, everything on tap is Bud Light and a ton of craft beers. There are a few places that haven't fallen into this, but it's a big problem. I hate it. I love Belgian and German beers and it has become almost impossible to get either of them on tap unless you go to a beer hall style bar.

A few of the "craft" beers are owned by the major multinational corporations anyhow.

<comment><USER28> i guess they weren't universally liked if they're getting changed out for craft brews.

<comment><USER27> Craft beers are cheaper for restaurants and have a higher profit margin, and there's the "community" factor of having local brews; and in some cases just some "good ole boy" attitude. There are a lot of incentives. It has not much to do with net sales, because it is offset by other incentives. Customers don't often complain, especially in bars that are for partying and generally just getting drunk. Who cares if this local brew tap doesn't get much requests? There is no feedback, and it just drives the people who like "imports" to buy bottles and the profit margin is even HIGHER there. It's a win/win for the restaurant/bar.

<comment><USER29> There is feedback, the fact that the business is making more money means they made the right decision.

<comment><USER27> That's not always the case, there may be a short term gain, but long term it may hurt sales as people go to different bars with more imports on tap. Here in Nashville there has been an influx of beer halls that serve German and Belgian beers, imo as a backlash to the localization of beers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love this, but I'm curious as to how much it can grow. The neighboring town to me has 5 craft breweries on its main street. All of them are within a 1 mile of each other. It's even crazier since there are also 3 winery storefronts/bars and a craft distillery in that same radius.

The other thing I've found is that it has inspired people, including myself, to try their own hand at brewing. I just bottled my first batch and while I have no delusions that I'll start my own brewery, it's a fun activity to try one's hand at.

<comment><USER31> With more focus on tap rooms and not so much on distribution, craft breweries can be more thought of as restaurants... and you don't hear people complaining about too many good restaurants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Indeed, between 2002 and 2007, employment at breweries actually declined in > the midst of an economic expansion.

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. Although it means loss of jobs, it also means the breweries got more efficient (producing the same or more with less human effort involved). How does this work, economically? More jobs is good, more efficiency is good, but you can't have both when growth is limited.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't blame me!

—PBR loyalist

<comment><USER34> Was drinking a PBR as I read this. I feel ashamed

<comment><USER35> Don't be, I'm sure it's breakfast time somewhere....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I dont understand is that in Europe there are dozens of delicious lagers, in the US I can't find any local copies. Mexican or Central American beers come closest. Surely with literally hundreds of microbrewery options there should be something close. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER37> Craft brewers don't do many lagers for two reasons.

The first is that they're "boring". You can already get lots of different mass market lagers, and they're all similar.

The second reason is that they're _hard_ to brew. You can hide the fact that you're a shit brewer behind malt and hops (to an extent). You can't cover up poor technique in a lager. The big megacorps have got their technique down to a tee.

<comment><USER38> They typically take longer to finish as well.

That said, I've been encouraged by more lagers from craft breweries showing up. There are some terrific ones that have been around for a long time too, say Prima Pils from Victory.

<comment><USER39> What do you mean by finish? I was taught by a brewer friend that lager takes a fraction of the time ales do. (due to faster fermentation from the yeast being on top and nearer oxygen).

<comment><USER40> Lagers are (or should be) fermented at around 10 deg C, and thus take longer to ferment than ales that are fermented at room temperature. They also need to be 'stored' (that's what 'lager' means) at 8-10 deg. for several weeks after primary fermentation to develop that characteristic lager flavour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Hoppiest*.

</comment><comment><USER42> Love Craft Beer, hate the Gout.

<comment><USER43> ouch

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > even [when] obsessed with efficiency, sometimes it is just as wise to design > for inefficiency

Holy shit

</comment><comment><USER45> Eventually alcohol usage will be looked upon with great fascination of a custom of a barbarian age: "They used to actually drink poison for thousands of years but we have moved on."

It'll take time but it'll happen.

<comment><USER46> Eventually our livers evolve (or are genetically engineered) and alcohol is just another tasty calorie source, like starch or fat.</comment></comment>


How to Make a Bug-Out Bag - <AUTHOR> http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2012/03/29/how-to-make-a-bug-out-bag/

<comment><USER2> While the spirit of the article is great, I can't say much for the gear selection. It smacks a bit of "tacti-cool city boy" and could be made more practical.

Some things to note:

Modular packs add lots of weight, and you'll want to travel light. You don't know how much ground you'll have to cover, what the terrain will be like, or who you will be trying to help along. Stick with something simple.

For men, military packs offer a good balance of weight, durability, and low price. Women _stay away_ from them. Military packs are designed for a male frame, and do not distribute weight optimally for a female frame. Proper weight distribution lets you carry a heavier load farther with less pain or fatigue.

Take the time to learn some basic survival skills. With more knowledge, you need less gear.

Don't rely on a rigid water bottle, period. They can be broken easily, wear out and leak, and are very low capacity compared to water bladders. Get a bladder (such as those by Camelbak or Platypus) and make sure your pack accommodates it so that you can drink while you move.

Don't carry prepackaged water -- the packaging takes up space and adds weight you don't need. Carry a good water purifier, and purification drops or tabs as back-up.

What kind of first aid gear you should carry depends a lot on your skill level, but whatever you buy MUST be in a waterproof, airtight container.

MREs are kind of bulky for what you get, but if you are a novice they are very easy to deal with. There are plenty of books on backpacking food with more palatable, nutritious, and portable suggestions if you are interested.

The advice on clothing is generally good, though an extra set of shoes, depending on what you wear, may be impractically bulky. Lots of extra socks are a must-have.

There are lots of shelter options out there -- what you will want depends a lot on whether you are bugging out with others, and your skill level. I'm partial to camping hammocks like the Hennessy, though my BoB also includes a tent because my son is usually with me. He has an emergency lightweight shelter in case we get separated. _Everyone_ in the family must have what they need to survive independently if separated, period. Even the little ones.

As for other gear, choose carefully, get the most utility for the weight/cost/size possible. In addition to the "ten essentials" (navigation, shelter, nutrition, hydration, insulation, first aid, fire, light, repair kit, sun/bug protection), I make sure to have provisions for communication, self defense, stress relief, and trade.

To touch on stress relief in particular, books and games can be bulky and heavy. I carry two packs of cards, a journal and writing implement (practically useful, not just for an outlet), and dice. Add to that the kata in my head (prearranged forms from martial arts) or any similarly repeatable exercise you know, and for just a few ounces you can have stress relief and entertainment alone or with others. Small musical instruments such as a harmonica are great, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an avid skier and I've started skiing with a pretty extensive bug-out bag. I've had enough off-piste scares and known people who have gotten in serious trouble (including one death) that it seems worth it.

I've got everything from water and first-aid to glow sticks (in case of raves, naturally), a GPS and PLB (SPOT Finder), cell phone, headlamp, along with a variety of knives (and a leatherman). I occasionally will bring a shovel and extra pair of socks.

I also wear a hi-vis ski outfit now. Obnoxious, but safe: [https://fbcdn- sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/535075_...](https://fbcdn- sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- prn1/535075_868275816172_3101830_38391810_1979748718_n.jpg)

<comment><USER4> For day hikes (into fairly remote areas), I carry a moderately larger day pack with enough gear to -- if somewhat uncomfortably -- get by for a week (in summer). Enough clothing (layers) to overnight and/or be comfortable on a cool day. Rain gear. Multipurpose tool. Local map(s). Adequate water for the day, plus water purification. Compass. First aid kit. Light source (these days, LED). Fire-making equipment. High cal trail mix. Bug repellent. Sunscreen. For convenience and comfort, some TP.

The pack's still quite manageable -- I need the exercise, anyway. And in addition to taking care of myself, I'm ready to help anyone on the trail who might be in trouble but unprepared.

Until it was recently stolen, I had a Jansport daypack that I rather liked. As mentioned, moderately larger (than a standard "backpack"). And while without a rigid frame, it did have a waist belt, although I often didn't use it.

P.S. I forgot to mention the cell phone. Turned off to conserve battery. In some areas, I have reception. In others, I know/suspect that after a few days missing, someone will bring in a local tranceiver to look for a signal from me. (And family know where I am and what network my phone uses.)

P.P.S. Signal mirror -- many compass models include a mirror that can function as such. I wrote this whole comment ad hoc, without actually packing or consulting a list.

And a mylar "thermo-blanket". Also quite shiny and "visible" -- and I think some now come colored red on one side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You'd want a truck rather than a bag to carry all that! For a serious discussion of wilderness travel, read Ray Jardine's _Trail Life_.

<http://www.rayjardine.com/ray-way/Trail-Life/index.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> You can definitely fit everything in the article inside a single bag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only thing this bag needs is a GottaGo portable cardboard toilet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a great thought. Amazing a cardboard toilet can hold 275 lbs. of human, though. Remarkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like somebody has been watching that Doomsday Preppers show.

<comment><AUTHOR> The primary inspiration for the article came from Patrolling with Sean Kennedy on RantTV. I haven't seen the Doomsday show, though I might check it out now that you mention it. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to find database design techniques? - <AUTHOR>

What are some good resources (blogs, courses, books, etc) for someone who'd like to implement a database?  I have some ideas that I think would make for a very usable database, but I'm far from an expert in databases or low-level programming and it would be more of a learning exercise than anything. <comment><USER2> What do you mean by implement a database? Do you mean and design and program your own?

If that's the case, a good resource would be to look at the developer guides for popular open source databases, such as the one for PostgreSQL[0], which will give a guide to how those databases are put together.

[0][http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/internals.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/internals.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's exactly what I mean! Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look at that link and dive into a few others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Based on the breadth of your question I have some design platitudes to offer, as you go into this.

* Think about how you want to read the data. This should inform how you design the storage.

* Understand concepts before you shortcut them. For example, synthetic keys are great, but be sure you know what the real primary key is for the data. NoSQL storage can be fast but you might pay in storage size or other flexibilities.

* Find sources of truth and use them to validate your learning. Build your intuition from fundamentals.

* Start fielding newbie questions on the topic. Appoint yourself expert-in-training.

* Learn PostgreSQL and participate in online discussion about it. This might be the most fertile OSS community I have found, pretty much ever. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER4> All the literature I've read tends to be highly academic and out dated. Few people cover modern nosql concepts (.please someone correct me if I am missing something). Your best bet is to read the papers backing the current industry standards.

</comment><comment><USER5> Let me know if you want to have a chat about this. Ive been tinkering with something related.</comment>


Preliminary YC Index – Winter 2013 Batch Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/preliminary-yc-index-winter-2013-batch-companies/

<comment><USER2> Svbtle was last batch, I believe. Only bringing this up so that Watsi will be listed in your "top 5" where they deserve to be. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I had some incorrect info from seed-db that I have removed.</comment></comment>