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ask hn: what are some excellent blogs by *technical founders*?
i'm compiling a list of the x best blogs by technical founders (i want to follow up afterwards with biz/growth hacker founders and startups).<p>if you have any suggestions i'd be glad to hear them. i'll publish a follow-up post with the list. | <link> <link> too (already mentioned). | <link> |
ask hn: what are some excellent blogs by *technical founders*?
i'm compiling a list of the x best blogs by technical founders (i want to follow up afterwards with biz/growth hacker founders and startups).<p>if you have any suggestions i'd be glad to hear them. i'll publish a follow-up post with the list. | <link> | <link> |
ask hn: what are some excellent blogs by *technical founders*?
i'm compiling a list of the x best blogs by technical founders (i want to follow up afterwards with biz/growth hacker founders and startups).<p>if you have any suggestions i'd be glad to hear them. i'll publish a follow-up post with the list. | <link> | i don't know that i'd call our blog "excellent" because, to be honest, updating it has been a bit low on the priority scale lately. but you might find it moderately interesting nonetheless.<link> |
ask hn: what are some excellent blogs by *technical founders*?
i'm compiling a list of the x best blogs by technical founders (i want to follow up afterwards with biz/growth hacker founders and startups).<p>if you have any suggestions i'd be glad to hear them. i'll publish a follow-up post with the list. | i don't know that i'd call our blog "excellent" because, to be honest, updating it has been a bit low on the priority scale lately. but you might find it moderately interesting nonetheless.<link> | rob walling's blog is pretty good. <link> |
using amazon s3 to host a static copy of your site
| why did you skip the final step? you were like 90 seconds away from having it deployed on cloudfront, and thus quickly served anywhere in the world on a real content delivery network.it would have taken something on the order of one right-click in your s3 organizer of choice, followed by a cname record.s3 has about 300-800ms latency on average. cloudfront's latency is 46ms. (exactly, every single time, 46ms. it's spooky).so close... and yet so far! | do it for free using google's app engine and dry drop <link> here is my test blog running using that setup: blog.innovationpower.ca |
using amazon s3 to host a static copy of your site
| do it for free using google's app engine and dry drop <link> here is my test blog running using that setup: blog.innovationpower.ca | note that from the article they never acutally ran the site off of s3. they copied everything over but the big traffic spike never came.imho, cloudfront would have been a smarter option, we've found that s3 has very volatile latency when serving files directly to end users over http. |
using amazon s3 to host a static copy of your site
| note that from the article they never acutally ran the site off of s3. they copied everything over but the big traffic spike never came.imho, cloudfront would have been a smarter option, we've found that s3 has very volatile latency when serving files directly to end users over http. | better: use some ec2 instances (stock, or custom) and run squid front-proxy. it's just as easy to configure and you get cache sweeping and so on for free. |
using amazon s3 to host a static copy of your site
| better: use some ec2 instances (stock, or custom) and run squid front-proxy. it's just as easy to configure and you get cache sweeping and so on for free. | why not just host the site on a scalable platform (rackspace cloud, mediatemple, etc.) to begin with? |
programmer passion: an enterprises most useful yet repressed advantage
| tremendously good quote:if your existing, potentially expensive and off the shelf solution, was any good then you wouldn’t need to mandate its use.there have been discussions on hn of what characterizes (in a derogatory way) "enterprise software". the quoted sentence captures in a nutshell the discriminator between "good software" and "enterprise software".fwiiw, i wrote down my thoughts on why "enterprise software" sucks:
<link> | it's somewhat of a chicken and egg problem: if you don't give programmers the ability to choose their tools, you can't hire top talent; if you can't hire top talent, you can't give programmers the ability to choose their tools. recruiting is also a zero-sum game: if you don't hire the best, your competitors will. that means if technology is an enabling factor in what you do (it doesn't have to be your core competence), empowering programmers is a competitive advantage.i was at cufp (commercial users of functional programming) recently where i had a conversation with yaron minsky of jane street. he mentioned that due to their use of ocaml (and being one of the few places in their industry where software engineers are not treated as second class citizens) they have a much higher quality of not only hires but applicants. he mentioned a job listing on a caml mailing list yielding a fairly small number of resumes, but a much higher percentage of these resumes translated into phone screens, on-sites and finally hires. i am not sure i'm allowed to disclose the percentage, but it's a fairly incredible number compared to what i've seen elsewhere; even the people they passed on, were of high quality.they are effectively choosing "the best of the best". if someone is willing to learn spend the time to learn a non-mainstream language (this used to be ruby and python in 2004, but now they're haskell/ocaml/scala, cl/scheme/clojure, erlang; this may change again, i see at least one of scala, clojure or erlang becoming mainstream) -- and i am talking about actually learn, beyond "fizz buzz" -- chances are they have the passion and the work ethic to be a good programmer.of course this isn't a bijective map: there are good programmers who aren't interested in non-mainstream languages (in many cases they have highly specific knowledge e.g., machine learning where the language used doesn't matter as much), but i've yet to see someone take the time to learn haskell on their own (without being forced to do so for a university course) who wasn't a good programmer: they may not be best of the best or a good fit for every position, but they are certainly not the kind of person you're going to regret bringing on-site to interview. |
programmer passion: an enterprises most useful yet repressed advantage
| it's somewhat of a chicken and egg problem: if you don't give programmers the ability to choose their tools, you can't hire top talent; if you can't hire top talent, you can't give programmers the ability to choose their tools. recruiting is also a zero-sum game: if you don't hire the best, your competitors will. that means if technology is an enabling factor in what you do (it doesn't have to be your core competence), empowering programmers is a competitive advantage.i was at cufp (commercial users of functional programming) recently where i had a conversation with yaron minsky of jane street. he mentioned that due to their use of ocaml (and being one of the few places in their industry where software engineers are not treated as second class citizens) they have a much higher quality of not only hires but applicants. he mentioned a job listing on a caml mailing list yielding a fairly small number of resumes, but a much higher percentage of these resumes translated into phone screens, on-sites and finally hires. i am not sure i'm allowed to disclose the percentage, but it's a fairly incredible number compared to what i've seen elsewhere; even the people they passed on, were of high quality.they are effectively choosing "the best of the best". if someone is willing to learn spend the time to learn a non-mainstream language (this used to be ruby and python in 2004, but now they're haskell/ocaml/scala, cl/scheme/clojure, erlang; this may change again, i see at least one of scala, clojure or erlang becoming mainstream) -- and i am talking about actually learn, beyond "fizz buzz" -- chances are they have the passion and the work ethic to be a good programmer.of course this isn't a bijective map: there are good programmers who aren't interested in non-mainstream languages (in many cases they have highly specific knowledge e.g., machine learning where the language used doesn't matter as much), but i've yet to see someone take the time to learn haskell on their own (without being forced to do so for a university course) who wasn't a good programmer: they may not be best of the best or a good fit for every position, but they are certainly not the kind of person you're going to regret bringing on-site to interview. | passion being the key to success is not limited to programming. if you love what you're doing you'll give it everything. this could be programming or carpentry.if you are doing what you're doing just for the paycheck you'll do the bare minimum required to achieve your desired performance level (i.e. some may still work hard enough to get an outstanding rating to get paid more $ but hate what they do).this is the key thing i've learned to look for in hiring. |
programmer passion: an enterprises most useful yet repressed advantage
| passion being the key to success is not limited to programming. if you love what you're doing you'll give it everything. this could be programming or carpentry.if you are doing what you're doing just for the paycheck you'll do the bare minimum required to achieve your desired performance level (i.e. some may still work hard enough to get an outstanding rating to get paid more $ but hate what they do).this is the key thing i've learned to look for in hiring. | 2 don’t mandate stacks, languages and frameworks.i know someone who had to put his job on the line to get use of spring vs heavyweight j2ee approved. seriously. there are entrenched forces who will spread disinformation if it threatens their comfort zone. a corporate environment is one where j2ee is just another checkbox on the thousand-item rfp. |
programmer passion: an enterprises most useful yet repressed advantage
| 2 don’t mandate stacks, languages and frameworks.i know someone who had to put his job on the line to get use of spring vs heavyweight j2ee approved. seriously. there are entrenched forces who will spread disinformation if it threatens their comfort zone. a corporate environment is one where j2ee is just another checkbox on the thousand-item rfp. | nice rant, but too bad that op probably hasn't heard some of the more reasonable counter-arguments and understood their logic. just a few "enterprise axioms": - stuff must work consistently, regardless of who works there.
- all data and programs must satisfy corporate audit requirements.
- all data and programs must be backed up and restorable.
- all technology must be supported, no matter what.
i've seen all kinds of creative solutions to enterprise problems that didn't satisfy these axioms. and you know what happens? something goes wrong and no one knows what to do.that server under joe's desk with those cool spreadsheets just crashed and no one ever backed it up. the nifty little ruby app that sue put together; she's gone and no one else knows ruby. the open source web server just crashed and no one is to blame because there is no vendor to blame. the nine new kinds of smart phones that different sales guys like but no one knows how to support.it goes on and on. creative people get creative. cool solutions help. until they don't help anymore. because the costs suddenly outweigh the benefits.and one more dirty little enterprise secret than many creative people overlook: you can solve most problems with many different tools. sure the old tools may not be as fun, but they can still get the job done at a lower cost.in an ideal world, we'd get to work will cool stuff and help the enterprise at the same time. but if the trade-off is our intellectual gratification vs. the enterprise's profits, the enterprise will win every time; count on it. |
moby: share your location in real time
| i think the original title referred to how this was some group of teenagers' first coding project. i think the mods should change it back - this shouldn't be viewed with the same harsh eyes as many startups are. | i personally use path and love the "neighborhood" alerts which periodically post to path "nathan is in downtown austin", "nathan is in barton hills, austin", etc. this system is very elegant and seamless because it posts directly to the social feed without any effort.from the landing page for the app i'm unsure of how this app works, or what purpose the shortlink serves. why not make the app link to facebook, twitter and other social networks and just post neighborhood information automatically like path does? (or maybe if they have privacy concerns with the press of one button.) this would be much simpler, easy to explain, and would doubtlessly be well received by those whose social networking apps don't have this useful feature of path built in. |
moby: share your location in real time
| i personally use path and love the "neighborhood" alerts which periodically post to path "nathan is in downtown austin", "nathan is in barton hills, austin", etc. this system is very elegant and seamless because it posts directly to the social feed without any effort.from the landing page for the app i'm unsure of how this app works, or what purpose the shortlink serves. why not make the app link to facebook, twitter and other social networks and just post neighborhood information automatically like path does? (or maybe if they have privacy concerns with the press of one button.) this would be much simpler, easy to explain, and would doubtlessly be well received by those whose social networking apps don't have this useful feature of path built in. | interesting.i tried to get my friends to sign up for google latitude but they didn't like the idea of it broadcasting a location when not needed.so maybe an expiring short link is a better approach.i like it. |
moby: share your location in real time
| interesting.i tried to get my friends to sign up for google latitude but they didn't like the idea of it broadcasting a location when not needed.so maybe an expiring short link is a better approach.i like it. | how is this different from 'find my friends' by apple[1] considering that this is ios only at present?[1] - <link> |
moby: share your location in real time
| how is this different from 'find my friends' by apple[1] considering that this is ios only at present?[1] - <link> | i don't want to broadcast my location constantly. but i would like the ability to grant permission to some of my friends and family to be able to look up my location when they need it. i'd also like a log and a notification when they look it up, so i know i'm not being stalked, and so they actually put thought into deciding whether or not it's appropriate to look up my location before doing so.i imagine an app which doesn't send my location to a third party service on an interval. when somebody wants to look up my location, the app on their phone sends a request to some third party service over the internet, which then pushes a request for my location to my phone. the first time the request comes in from a particular user, it asks me if i'd like to grant them this privilege permanently, temporarily, or to block it. if i grant it, then i don't need to approve future lookups but i am alerted to them happening.[edit] the requests could also be of the style: "let me know when you arrive at location x", instead of just "let me know where you are now". would be handy for meeting up at places on nights out. |
examples of large-scale functional language projects
| the fact that people keep naming the same few well known examples (eg jane street capital) plus a few extremely obscure projects whenever this question comes up essentially demonstrates that functional programming hasn't really caught on yet. by contrast, if someone asked you "who uses java/c++/c#/etc.?", there are so many well-known answers you wouldn't even know where to start.don't get me wrong, i like what i've seen from functional programming so far (currently learning clojure), but at the moment it's a niche thing at best. | i always find it funny when people consider lisp a functional language. lisp is really multiparadigm: it's as easy to write imperative code as it is to write functional code.i worked at ita in their lisp code for two years. it's mostly imperative, and only uses a functional style where you would in other languages, e.g. using recursion to walk a tree. |
examples of large-scale functional language projects
| i always find it funny when people consider lisp a functional language. lisp is really multiparadigm: it's as easy to write imperative code as it is to write functional code.i worked at ita in their lisp code for two years. it's mostly imperative, and only uses a functional style where you would in other languages, e.g. using recursion to walk a tree. | firstly, i barely made it out of high-school so what do i know, but... the criteria seems deleterious to the point of the inquiry.is not the oft proffered benefits of a functional language smaller teams and fewer lines of code?should not we ask what monumental tasks, that would normally require a large team and many lines of code, are being done in a functional language?mind you, i am not saying the answer would be different but it seems less like a complex question[1].[1]: <link> |
examples of large-scale functional language projects
| firstly, i barely made it out of high-school so what do i know, but... the criteria seems deleterious to the point of the inquiry.is not the oft proffered benefits of a functional language smaller teams and fewer lines of code?should not we ask what monumental tasks, that would normally require a large team and many lines of code, are being done in a functional language?mind you, i am not saying the answer would be different but it seems less like a complex question[1].[1]: <link> | this post is from 2007 but still seems timely... note that ita (acquired by google today) is a lisp user. |
examples of large-scale functional language projects
| this post is from 2007 but still seems timely... note that ita (acquired by google today) is a lisp user. | note that just because a project using lisp doesn't mean it's a functional project. plenty of lisp programs are written in imperative styles. i've done couple, guilty as charged. |
income inequality, as seen from space
| this is only relevant for suburban (or village) style settlements.for example, most of ex-ussr cities are built in huge 5-, 9- or 15-floor apartment blocks with lots of trees around them.in this case, trees tell you nothing: there might be few trees because the part of the city is newly-built; there are no trees in historic inner city but it's usually the best and most expensive place. if there's a plenty of trees, it still tells you nothing. | is this "income inequality" or "wealth inequality"?they're correlated, but not the same thing. |
income inequality, as seen from space
| is this "income inequality" or "wealth inequality"?they're correlated, but not the same thing. | i think that this image (<link> of korea is the most striking representation of image equality. it is visible from space with the naked eye. |
income inequality, as seen from space
| i think that this image (<link> of korea is the most striking representation of image equality. it is visible from space with the naked eye. | in a follow-up, the author posts similar images submitted by readers.<link> of these images show a border between rich and poor areas. the visual effect is striking. |
income inequality, as seen from space
| in a follow-up, the author posts similar images submitted by readers.<link> of these images show a border between rich and poor areas. the visual effect is striking. | hmmm, looks from outer space can be deceiving. the rent i pay for my one bedroom apartment in ball square is obscene. |
gotchas, irritants and warts in go web development
| great post. i've done some experimentation with go for web dev, and encountered similar problems; it's such a delight to write code in that i'd love to use it in production, but can't justify spending a lot of time debugging the immature libraries and writing new ones, particularly not on the clock for clients. i too ran into a problem with null types in another library interfacing with postgresql. the weak points i found were:* lack of an orm (there are many, almost all incomplete, and lacking in some way)* immature or incomplete db interface libraries* no db migrations (would love to see a simple sql-only solution here)* package management is simple and elegant but without explicit versioning, so forking is the end result to ensure stability* no process pool management for running go behind something like apache or nginx.this goagain tool looks interesting for the last point though:<link> the routing i found pretty straightforward with something like github.com/gorilla/mux so there are solutions, they're just not always as fully baked or as mature as you'd find in other ecosystems. one place go shines though is the great built in web server which really simplifies getting up and running and testing, and which i see they've built on here.given how easy and pleasurable it is to work with, and the focus on practicality rather than language features, i'm quite confident that go will reach it's stated aim of becoming a popular server-side language quite soon. for those new to the philosophy behind the language, i found this informative - <link> | the timeout issue was fixed in go 1.0.3. the problem wasn't that the connections timed out, but that the database/sql package wasn't able to handle this correctly.
<link> keep in mind, that the database/sql package is - like go itself - still very young. there is still a lot of work to do compared to mature libraries like jdbc, but it will improve with every release. |
gotchas, irritants and warts in go web development
| the timeout issue was fixed in go 1.0.3. the problem wasn't that the connections timed out, but that the database/sql package wasn't able to handle this correctly.
<link> keep in mind, that the database/sql package is - like go itself - still very young. there is still a lot of work to do compared to mature libraries like jdbc, but it will improve with every release. | seems like most issues (except the nil problem, which is explained very well by chimeracoder) are not really with the language itself, but just with its ecosystem, which naturally is nowhere near something like java or ruby at this point. i agree, and while i love go, i would probably develop a new web app in sinatra. who knows if that will be the case next year, though. |
gotchas, irritants and warts in go web development
| seems like most issues (except the nil problem, which is explained very well by chimeracoder) are not really with the language itself, but just with its ecosystem, which naturally is nowhere near something like java or ruby at this point. i agree, and while i love go, i would probably develop a new web app in sinatra. who knows if that will be the case next year, though. | i'm not an expert in databases, but a boolean that can take 3 values smells wrong to me. is this regarded as best-practice? |
gotchas, irritants and warts in go web development
| i'm not an expert in databases, but a boolean that can take 3 values smells wrong to me. is this regarded as best-practice? | 2 go does not allow many basic types, such as strings or booleans, to be nil. instead, when a type is initialized without a value, it defaults to the “zero value” for that type. this is frequently useful, but complicates database interactions, where null values are common.this sounds like they weren't defining their types properly.if your value can potentially be null, it should be a pointer to the type, not the type itself. a string can't be null, but a pointer to a string can.(in fact, there's no magic going on here - 'nil' is simply the zero value of a pointer. so you always get the zero value - you just need to choose the type that has the zero value you want... which is, in this case, a pointer, not a value).as explained well in this thread[0], this is the most accurate representation of the data itself. you could create your own type that automatically decodes all null values to whatever the zero value is (empty string, etc)., but then you lose that information.yes, this forces you to do a check for the null value before using the data for the first time (or to invent your own monad for abstracting this), but at a high level, that's what you have to do in every language.[0] <link>!topic/golang-nu... |
conspiracy and an off-by-one error
| very nice writeup!to finish the puzzle, consider the following comment in one open-source mp4 library:
<link>;according to iso/iec-14496-5-2001, the difference between unix time and mac os time is 2082758400. however this is wrong and 2082844800 is correct."mp4 stores timestamps by mac epochs. the wrong value of the difference between unix and mac
epochs is wrong exactly by 24 hours and is hardcoded in the mpeg-4 reference software, from which it made its way into a number of libraries.(i work for google and have contacted the right people in the attempt to address this bug soon). | off by one errors affecting geopolitics. that's a scary thought. any other examples out there? there are things like false missile launch positives during the cuban missile crisis... |
conspiracy and an off-by-one error
| off by one errors affecting geopolitics. that's a scary thought. any other examples out there? there are things like false missile launch positives during the cuban missile crisis... | excellent review and analysis!i watched the original video (about the time-stamp) yesterday and someone in the comments section said about the same (that there is a bug in the system).but i wouldn't label the original poster a conspiracy theorist over this.it's perfectly normal for someone to assume youtube is working as it should, in which case, seeing the early time-stamp should definitely set off some question marks.in combination with the current regime's use of indiscriminate violence, misinformation, and downright lies, it reasonable to question anything they put out. |
conspiracy and an off-by-one error
| excellent review and analysis!i watched the original video (about the time-stamp) yesterday and someone in the comments section said about the same (that there is a bug in the system).but i wouldn't label the original poster a conspiracy theorist over this.it's perfectly normal for someone to assume youtube is working as it should, in which case, seeing the early time-stamp should definitely set off some question marks.in combination with the current regime's use of indiscriminate violence, misinformation, and downright lies, it reasonable to question anything they put out. | great technical analysis, but poor choice of words. why does the author deem it necessary to sensationalise it by using terms like conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists? those are rather derogatory and loaded, but introduce no actual information except that a conspiracy is involved:
<link> that both the currently most accepted hypothesis (rebels armed by the russians did it) as well as the russian party line (ukranians did it to frame the russians) involve government conspiracies and are, thus, conspiracy theories. |
conspiracy and an off-by-one error
| great technical analysis, but poor choice of words. why does the author deem it necessary to sensationalise it by using terms like conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists? those are rather derogatory and loaded, but introduce no actual information except that a conspiracy is involved:
<link> that both the currently most accepted hypothesis (rebels armed by the russians did it) as well as the russian party line (ukranians did it to frame the russians) involve government conspiracies and are, thus, conspiracy theories. | the comments on reddit are quite interesting too: <link> |
tim berners lee slams internet fast lanes: ‘it’s bribery.’
| so the man who decided that drm in html5 was a good thing has an opinion on the well-being of the world wide web, eh?sorry if this sounds bitter. i'm just posting from a browser unable to access html5 content at a regular interval. it's an open source browser, and the suggested "fix" is always using a closed-source browser, os or both.i thought this web-thing was supposed to be open and cross platform? | i am in favour of net neutrality but worry that everyone is defending a status quo that is still bad. for most consumers and buisness access to the net is hardly free in a financial sense. entry level bandwidth on aws/azure/app engine is still very expensive and seems completely overpriced compared to storage.for the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. an entrepreneur could setup a wifi hotspot in an area with poor coverage but no one would use it because we are all trying to do everything on a 3g data plan.i want competition for last mile access that allows the consumer to connect based on the best connection available regarldess of who has provided it. companies should be paid for providing bandwidth and it makes sense to ask large players like facebook and nextflix to pay the bill ($0.2 per gb to guarantee a fast connection to the user should be reasonable). the only way to break the telcos is to fund open compeition. |
tim berners lee slams internet fast lanes: ‘it’s bribery.’
| i am in favour of net neutrality but worry that everyone is defending a status quo that is still bad. for most consumers and buisness access to the net is hardly free in a financial sense. entry level bandwidth on aws/azure/app engine is still very expensive and seems completely overpriced compared to storage.for the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. an entrepreneur could setup a wifi hotspot in an area with poor coverage but no one would use it because we are all trying to do everything on a 3g data plan.i want competition for last mile access that allows the consumer to connect based on the best connection available regarldess of who has provided it. companies should be paid for providing bandwidth and it makes sense to ask large players like facebook and nextflix to pay the bill ($0.2 per gb to guarantee a fast connection to the user should be reasonable). the only way to break the telcos is to fund open compeition. | i can't help but wonder if the fate of internet infrastructure will follow that of transport infrastructure (build-operate-transfer : <link> off history, it seems that private ownership of common property is doomed to fail. |
tim berners lee slams internet fast lanes: ‘it’s bribery.’
| i can't help but wonder if the fate of internet infrastructure will follow that of transport infrastructure (build-operate-transfer : <link> off history, it seems that private ownership of common property is doomed to fail. | see, telling congress that something is "bribery" and expecting congress to think that's something bad is just wishful thinking on tbl's part, bless his heart. |
tim berners lee slams internet fast lanes: ‘it’s bribery.’
| see, telling congress that something is "bribery" and expecting congress to think that's something bad is just wishful thinking on tbl's part, bless his heart. | how does this isp issue affect the internet outside the us? i'm guessing it's not really going to change "the internet" as a whole, just us in the us. |
bitcoin will prosper until governments or banks decide to crush it
| i'm trying to think of some <foo> that doesn't work in the pattern of "<foo> will prosper until governments or banks decide to crush it".excepting the trivial cases of things that won't prosper regardless, i'm not coming up with anything. :)some of the assumptions in the article seem pretty weak to me: e.g. "anonymity threatens control" uh, cash is a lot more anonymous than bitcoin. the structure of cash's anonymity limitations are somewhat different than bitcoin's but it's hard to argue that bitcoin is too different on that point. ... and it's not just cash, any other valuable commodity is fairly anonymous, and easily argued as more so than bitcoin— yet, as far as i am aware, there is no great effort afoot to outlaw coal. | it is immune to the inflation that plagues all fiat currenciesfunny thing is, most actual economists would say that the inflexibility of bitcoin is a disadvantage.discussions of bitcoin are dominated by people for whom certain rules about money (such as: "it must be a forever fixed amount") are basically articles of faith. outside of this comparatively small population, people primarily care about other things, such as good economic growth, full employment, social equity in the sense of equality, and all sorts of things.having a forever fixed supply of money tends to be detrimental for those things. |
bitcoin will prosper until governments or banks decide to crush it
| it is immune to the inflation that plagues all fiat currenciesfunny thing is, most actual economists would say that the inflexibility of bitcoin is a disadvantage.discussions of bitcoin are dominated by people for whom certain rules about money (such as: "it must be a forever fixed amount") are basically articles of faith. outside of this comparatively small population, people primarily care about other things, such as good economic growth, full employment, social equity in the sense of equality, and all sorts of things.having a forever fixed supply of money tends to be detrimental for those things. | every currency created since the advent of money 2,700 years ago has fit nicely into one of two classifications: either it was a representative money system, deriving its worth from a link to some physical store of value like gold, silver or gemstones; or it was fiat [...]and then the author suddenly stops and ignores the next obvious question: where do gold, silver and gemstones get their value from? the simple answer is because people like to have them and their supply is more or less fixed (which causes people to believe they won't suddenly lose their value). the exact same thing applies to bitcoins: bitcoin is the store of value.the us already tried once to make a certain type of currency it couldn't control illegal: in 1933 it forbid anyone to own gold. that didn't make gold worthless any more than it will make bitcoins worthless. the only thing i believe that could do that to bitcoin is if it is replaced by another digital currency. |
bitcoin will prosper until governments or banks decide to crush it
| every currency created since the advent of money 2,700 years ago has fit nicely into one of two classifications: either it was a representative money system, deriving its worth from a link to some physical store of value like gold, silver or gemstones; or it was fiat [...]and then the author suddenly stops and ignores the next obvious question: where do gold, silver and gemstones get their value from? the simple answer is because people like to have them and their supply is more or less fixed (which causes people to believe they won't suddenly lose their value). the exact same thing applies to bitcoins: bitcoin is the store of value.the us already tried once to make a certain type of currency it couldn't control illegal: in 1933 it forbid anyone to own gold. that didn't make gold worthless any more than it will make bitcoins worthless. the only thing i believe that could do that to bitcoin is if it is replaced by another digital currency. | my humble perspective: nothing matters as long as profitability and opportunity exist. bitcoin will continue its growth as long as it's profitable to operate a miner, a business, an exchange and as long as there is an opportunity to run something. people will go where the money is.my other humble take: high-rises and businesses are built by continuous and large flow of money (wealth) into a system. bitcoin business will continue to grow and solidify (have better security, legal status, branding...) as the money keeps flowing to the system. |
bitcoin will prosper until governments or banks decide to crush it
| my humble perspective: nothing matters as long as profitability and opportunity exist. bitcoin will continue its growth as long as it's profitable to operate a miner, a business, an exchange and as long as there is an opportunity to run something. people will go where the money is.my other humble take: high-rises and businesses are built by continuous and large flow of money (wealth) into a system. bitcoin business will continue to grow and solidify (have better security, legal status, branding...) as the money keeps flowing to the system. | the 'crush' scenario presented here -- governments using their fiat currency power to alternately buy and dump bitcoins, creating a boom-bust cycle that scares other people away -- doesn't seem very smart or likely to succeed.speculators would recognize it and attempt to profit by front-running the government operations (increasing the cost to the government, and dampening the volatility).bitcoin service providers could offer volatility-protection (instant conversion to other currencies), as some do already.governments could lose money on each manipulated boom-bust cycle, and at the bottom of each cycle, bitcoin would still be alive and ready for new uses.far more likely, in my mind, is an attempt to coopt bitcoin. officially approve it, with reporting/identity conditions that don't encumber legal use but ensure tax collection. or, launch a bitcoin-like competitor backed by government redemption guarantees (t-bills, tips, etc). so, above-ground businesses can get most of the crypto-currency benefits without the rough edges created by its most anti-state qualities. |
how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
| “it is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” i really like this hemingway quote. if you are just doing a startup for the end result then you're probably in it for the wrong reasons. you're probably going to fail, so hopefully the journey is somewhat rewarding.most of the comments here are pretty harsh, but i think the author has some really good points. maybe not everyone is impressed by his former management consulting job, but even if you aren't, quitting your job (or forgoing a regular salary) to do a startup is probably not going to be supported in everyone in your life. my personal experience has been that most people have been supportive, but i live in the bay area. my parents try to be supportive, but i think they think i'm crazy/foolish and keep it to themselves. social pressures can be a big hardship, having support from friends and family can make things a lot easier.as far as money goes, he is totally right. having savings to live off of for a year+ is a wise plan. (but so is living frugally from the first day you quit your job, and perhaps bringing a refillable water bottle). | "one day, i even found myself asking my girlfriend for a few cents because i had no money to buy bottled water [...] get ready for a smaller apartment, smaller food portions, or counting your cents, which you never cared about in your life previously." this guy is presenting advice that is very specific to his life experience as though it is universal. most people in this country do that all the time, and don't consider bottled water a necessity. |
how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
| "one day, i even found myself asking my girlfriend for a few cents because i had no money to buy bottled water [...] get ready for a smaller apartment, smaller food portions, or counting your cents, which you never cared about in your life previously." this guy is presenting advice that is very specific to his life experience as though it is universal. most people in this country do that all the time, and don't consider bottled water a necessity. | not getting a full night's sleep is not required for starting a company. operating for a full day sleep deprived is like being drunk. but on the other hand, if everyone really is sleep deprived, not being sleep deprived is a competitive advantage. |
how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
| not getting a full night's sleep is not required for starting a company. operating for a full day sleep deprived is like being drunk. but on the other hand, if everyone really is sleep deprived, not being sleep deprived is a competitive advantage. | i have a question now, i have just started my corporate career and i have that entrepreneur in me...i know i can build good software or something new , what do i do...i am confused as i am kind of liking the new job ...wont this kill the entrepreneur in me ? |
how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up
| i have a question now, i have just started my corporate career and i have that entrepreneur in me...i know i can build good software or something new , what do i do...i am confused as i am kind of liking the new job ...wont this kill the entrepreneur in me ? | after 8 years..my whole team was made redundant. i'm thinking if i should look for a job or start my own. |
sandisk announces 4tb ssd, hopes for 8tb next year.
| over the last decade ssds have increased their storage capacity at an incredible rate. this growth has mostly been fueled by adapting better process technology. i read a while back that the move to ever smaller scales (now 19nm) came at the costs of increased errors rates and that the limiting factor going forward would be error correction. has this situation changed, or is sandisk just throwing chips at the capacity problem, along with better controllers, and targeting an enterprise segment willing to pay the price? | with all the process shrinks, and packing more bits per cell, nand flash is getting to the point where its characteristics are closer to dram than traditional magnetic storage; like hard drives the data will stay there for a while when they're powered off, but like dram, it's not going to be there forever. however, unlike dram and more like hard drives, they wear out.for enterprise cache-like applications this makes sense, but with dram prices not that far off (only a few times), i wonder if battery-backed dram might actually offer better value (and theoretically could be far higher performing) than having to replace worn-out ssds periodically. |
sandisk announces 4tb ssd, hopes for 8tb next year.
| with all the process shrinks, and packing more bits per cell, nand flash is getting to the point where its characteristics are closer to dram than traditional magnetic storage; like hard drives the data will stay there for a while when they're powered off, but like dram, it's not going to be there forever. however, unlike dram and more like hard drives, they wear out.for enterprise cache-like applications this makes sense, but with dram prices not that far off (only a few times), i wonder if battery-backed dram might actually offer better value (and theoretically could be far higher performing) than having to replace worn-out ssds periodically. | i'm sure they wear out quick with heavy writes. on the other hand, the killer app for these has to be media streaming. how many more movies can netflix support with these new drives? i wonder if they are space limited or iops limited."the drive is aimed at read-intensive applications, such as data warehousing, media streaming and web servers. the typical workload envisioned for the 4tb drive is 90% read and 10% write, sandisk stated." |
sandisk announces 4tb ssd, hopes for 8tb next year.
| i'm sure they wear out quick with heavy writes. on the other hand, the killer app for these has to be media streaming. how many more movies can netflix support with these new drives? i wonder if they are space limited or iops limited."the drive is aimed at read-intensive applications, such as data warehousing, media streaming and web servers. the typical workload envisioned for the 4tb drive is 90% read and 10% write, sandisk stated." | what is the anticipated price/tb curve of ssd over the next five years? at what point would most consumer storage switch from hdd to ssd?if we start with a hdd/ssd price ratio of 1:7 (based on a quick check with amazon) and hope for ssds to get cheaper/tb by 50% each coming 18 months (?) we'd have a strong incentive to switch by year 2019. |
sandisk announces 4tb ssd, hopes for 8tb next year.
| what is the anticipated price/tb curve of ssd over the next five years? at what point would most consumer storage switch from hdd to ssd?if we start with a hdd/ssd price ratio of 1:7 (based on a quick check with amazon) and hope for ssds to get cheaper/tb by 50% each coming 18 months (?) we'd have a strong incentive to switch by year 2019. | i wish intel was innovating a little more. |
are you really sure you’re ready to start a startup?
| wade, so sorry to hear about your dad and the events affecting the other members of your team.but thank you for this post. i think so many people swimming around the fishbowl forget about the actual life that's happening, both on the inside and the outside.and while i agree with michaelmartin that hunting down the most severe scenarios that could happen in the coming years isn't the way to go, i think it's important to understand that shit will happen in the coming years, and we're fools if we think that because we're working on a startup, everything else in life will just work out. | i can see what wade is saying here, but i don't agree with the conclusion."so when you begin a startup, make sure to think long term. will you still want to do this if a family member gets sick? will you want to do this if you have kids? will you want to do this when _____ happens?if the answer is “no”, then you’ve saved yourself a lot of unnecessary heartache."i think it's fine for the answer to be no to some of these, but still want to do a startup.if your partner was hit by a bus, then in that instant almost everyone would prefer to be at some large company where you can hand off your responsibility in no time and the company will support your time off etc.that just makes it easier to be a good person in those times. everyone could do with a break in times like that, if it was an option.i don't think hunting down the most severe scenarios that could happen to you in the next x years and trying to find one where you'd rather not be running a startup is a valid reason not to start one. |
are you really sure you’re ready to start a startup?
| i can see what wade is saying here, but i don't agree with the conclusion."so when you begin a startup, make sure to think long term. will you still want to do this if a family member gets sick? will you want to do this if you have kids? will you want to do this when _____ happens?if the answer is “no”, then you’ve saved yourself a lot of unnecessary heartache."i think it's fine for the answer to be no to some of these, but still want to do a startup.if your partner was hit by a bus, then in that instant almost everyone would prefer to be at some large company where you can hand off your responsibility in no time and the company will support your time off etc.that just makes it easier to be a good person in those times. everyone could do with a break in times like that, if it was an option.i don't think hunting down the most severe scenarios that could happen to you in the next x years and trying to find one where you'd rather not be running a startup is a valid reason not to start one. | i have no interest in doing a startup the way the article describes. it just seems way to stressful.but i think too much attention is given to these go-for-broke-all-or-nothing kind of startup endeavors when, as software developers you're in a unique position to concentrate more on micropreneurship and/or bootstrapping ... a less taxing way of starting and running a business that focuses more on increasing your passive income while maintaining a job and living a healthier lifestyle. |
are you really sure you’re ready to start a startup?
| i have no interest in doing a startup the way the article describes. it just seems way to stressful.but i think too much attention is given to these go-for-broke-all-or-nothing kind of startup endeavors when, as software developers you're in a unique position to concentrate more on micropreneurship and/or bootstrapping ... a less taxing way of starting and running a business that focuses more on increasing your passive income while maintaining a job and living a healthier lifestyle. | it's easy to underestimate how many years you need to be willing to put into the startup. a fraction of startups succeed, and a fraction of that fraction succeed quickly. if you're only willing to put in a year or two your odds of success are astronomically low. plan for the long term, it's not a sprint. |
are you really sure you’re ready to start a startup?
| it's easy to underestimate how many years you need to be willing to put into the startup. a fraction of startups succeed, and a fraction of that fraction succeed quickly. if you're only willing to put in a year or two your odds of success are astronomically low. plan for the long term, it's not a sprint. | no one is ever ready to have kids. yet they do.no one is ever ready to go to war. yet they do.this post perpetuates and glorifies the myth of startups as extreme sport. if we look at businesses (let's not call them "startups") around the world that have succeeded through the ages, i don't think most of them began with the all-or-nothing insanity that is implied here.stay focused. work hard. life goes on. |
dbinbox – an inbox for your dropbox
| almost like an actual drop box | how is this any different than emailing a file to yourself? and what prevents anyone from uploading large, malicious, or spammy files to your dropbox? |
dbinbox – an inbox for your dropbox
| how is this any different than emailing a file to yourself? and what prevents anyone from uploading large, malicious, or spammy files to your dropbox? | i use airdropper.com for this as it allows me to create one-time upload links. its pretty odd that dropbox doesn't offer better functionality here. my use case is being on our clients' systems and servers and in particular i don't want to enter any sort of personal credentials; email, dropbox or otherwise on their system. |
dbinbox – an inbox for your dropbox
| i use airdropper.com for this as it allows me to create one-time upload links. its pretty odd that dropbox doesn't offer better functionality here. my use case is being on our clients' systems and servers and in particular i don't want to enter any sort of personal credentials; email, dropbox or otherwise on their system. | i really like the idea but i also have some concerns about people uploading random files to your dropbox. the idea with the password/access token is a good first step but i was surprised to see the password in plaintext in the url after you login...besides that it looks someone claimed your signin page as a username. |
dbinbox – an inbox for your dropbox
| i really like the idea but i also have some concerns about people uploading random files to your dropbox. the idea with the password/access token is a good first step but i was surprised to see the password in plaintext in the url after you login...besides that it looks someone claimed your signin page as a username. | <link> |
an inventor wants one less wire to worry about
| a demo at all things d 2 years ago: <link> design in that video involves transmitting ultrasound from a central charging station to an ultrasound receiver and that receiver is then plugged into a cell phone using a normal cable. the claim in that video is that it takes 3.3 hours to charge the receiver but she doesn't actually mention the watts or joules involved. given that most claims of technology that can charge a device from across the room have turned out to be bullshit, i'm going to lump this claim of into the same bucket until there is more evidence to show otherwise. | did anyone else read this and immediately wonder, "how many watts?" 1.5 pages of prose and no hard numbers. years in the industry reading marketing white papers and such cause things like this to really set off the bullshit detector. i'm not saying it's not possible, but, just give me the power (in watts) that is being transmitted by a prototype device. if you don't put that number as a feature bullet, i automatically assume you've got something to hide. |
an inventor wants one less wire to worry about
| did anyone else read this and immediately wonder, "how many watts?" 1.5 pages of prose and no hard numbers. years in the industry reading marketing white papers and such cause things like this to really set off the bullshit detector. i'm not saying it's not possible, but, just give me the power (in watts) that is being transmitted by a prototype device. if you don't put that number as a feature bullet, i automatically assume you've got something to hide. | i'd be curious to see a graph of transmission efficiency vs. distance. the technology here is almost certainly acoustic beamforming, and that large square under wraps in the image is an array of small ultrasonic piezo speakers. beamforming will give you better than 1/r^2 relationship between power and distance, but probably nowhere close to linear.i'd be hard pressed to imagine this working over distances larger than the 3 feet demonstrated, which suggests constraints on the use case, like charging your laptop while its on a desk, for which there would seem to be easier methods of wireless charging (inductive coupling, conductive pads, etc).very interesting in concept, i'd like to see numbers before i believe anything. |
an inventor wants one less wire to worry about
| i'd be curious to see a graph of transmission efficiency vs. distance. the technology here is almost certainly acoustic beamforming, and that large square under wraps in the image is an array of small ultrasonic piezo speakers. beamforming will give you better than 1/r^2 relationship between power and distance, but probably nowhere close to linear.i'd be hard pressed to imagine this working over distances larger than the 3 feet demonstrated, which suggests constraints on the use case, like charging your laptop while its on a desk, for which there would seem to be easier methods of wireless charging (inductive coupling, conductive pads, etc).very interesting in concept, i'd like to see numbers before i believe anything. | i wonder about the health aspect of this. it seems there is very little known about long-term exposure to high intensity ultrasound.also, there could be a risk of ear damage if a non-linear material came into the sound field, and producing distortion artifacts in the audible frequency range - given that about 1w/m^2 can be enough to cause damage. |
an inventor wants one less wire to worry about
| i wonder about the health aspect of this. it seems there is very little known about long-term exposure to high intensity ultrasound.also, there could be a risk of ear damage if a non-linear material came into the sound field, and producing distortion artifacts in the audible frequency range - given that about 1w/m^2 can be enough to cause damage. | did she have a hard time finding investors because it was a hardware business, or because she was a woman?did she ultimately get investment because she was a woman, in spite of the hardware business?according to a friend's college thesis, there are lots of concrete reasons vcs don't invest in women.[0] in summary, vcs don't take a girl very seriously. the thesis makes the case though that there's real opportunity for women founders, not the least because they're so undervalued for reasons under than business fundamentals.so maybe meredith got investment precisely because she was a woman. the collection of investors is curious. according to crunchbase, marissa mayer invested in 8 companies over the last 2 years (+square in 2009), 7 of which have women founders or co-founders. lady gaga's manager, who i thought was not a professional investor, in fact makes a lot of investments. according to crunchbase, 4 of 16 of his investments have women founders or co-founders. by comparison, venturesource shows about 1 in 14 startups with funding have women founders or co-founders in 2010—more details in alisha's paper.still, it would be wrong to accuse of sexism the "hundreds" of the investors who declined her project. she's an astrobiologist who wants to run a mass-manufacturing business. i'm not a venture capitalist, but i can see aversion to hardware manufacturing risk generally being the biggest factor here.[0] <link> |
driverless cars are further away than you think
| one of the author's main criticisms seems to be that bmw et are commercialized (e.g. good looking and cheap) self-driving cars and google is making ugly expensive ones.but i'd argue that concern is backwards. first, go for correctness. perfect the algorithm and sensors, get the car working. then look at scaling down the technology and making it cheaper. the fact that google doesn't make cars (a point the author made) is kind of irrelevant, because this is a sensor/control/software problem, not a car problem.recognize that bmw/daimler/et al really don't want true self driving cars. it's not really in their interest, because it would radically reduce the need for car ownership and would open up a new world of on-the-fly car rental. human drivers required = good business. i'm not saying its a conspiracy, just that they have no passion to disrupt their industry in this way.even the cost is somewhat moot if the business model is different. let's say the google car sensor package costs $100,000. that's cost prohibitive for individual ownership, but it would not be a problem for a business model like zipcar + uber, where you call a car on your mobile phone to get you, and 'rent it' for a short self-driving or assisted trip. if car use moves from ownership to renting, then many people can spread the cost of the sensors. | a self-driving car never gets tired or drunk. it never gets bored. it never talks on the phone, and it's never distracted by passengers or music. with the right sensors, it can see better than any human. it can react faster and more accurately than a formula 1 driver.even with all these advantages, some automated vehicles will crash and kill their occupants. some will even kill pedestrians, and sometimes this will be due to software error.but humans do this already, and we do it so often that it doesn't even get on the news. around 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents each year. that's just over 2% of all deaths[1]. unless the automated vehicles of the future are orders of magnitude worse than current ones, switching to them will save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of injuries.it's sad that bureaucracy and human irrationality cause so much unnecessary death and suffering.1. <link> |
driverless cars are further away than you think
| a self-driving car never gets tired or drunk. it never gets bored. it never talks on the phone, and it's never distracted by passengers or music. with the right sensors, it can see better than any human. it can react faster and more accurately than a formula 1 driver.even with all these advantages, some automated vehicles will crash and kill their occupants. some will even kill pedestrians, and sometimes this will be due to software error.but humans do this already, and we do it so often that it doesn't even get on the news. around 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents each year. that's just over 2% of all deaths[1]. unless the automated vehicles of the future are orders of magnitude worse than current ones, switching to them will save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of injuries.it's sad that bureaucracy and human irrationality cause so much unnecessary death and suffering.1. <link> | > for all its expertise in developing search technology and software, google has zero experience building cars. to understand how autonomous driving is more likely to emerge, it is more instructive to see what some of the world’s most advanced automakers are working onwhat is this bullshit? he basically dismisses the entire google effort right off the bat, and provides no information about it whatsoever? just like that? as far as i know, google is in fact much farther along than bmw, and i'd really like to know what they're capable of. it doesn't matter that google isn't a car company. if they can manage reliable driverless cars, car companies will be lining up to license their technology. |
driverless cars are further away than you think
| > for all its expertise in developing search technology and software, google has zero experience building cars. to understand how autonomous driving is more likely to emerge, it is more instructive to see what some of the world’s most advanced automakers are working onwhat is this bullshit? he basically dismisses the entire google effort right off the bat, and provides no information about it whatsoever? just like that? as far as i know, google is in fact much farther along than bmw, and i'd really like to know what they're capable of. it doesn't matter that google isn't a car company. if they can manage reliable driverless cars, car companies will be lining up to license their technology. | i've always wondered if there isn't an intermediate step, a sort of 80/20 rule to gain most of the benefits for 20% of the work, without your car actually taking you for a drive while you sleep in the back seat.for example, lets assume highway traffic is caused primarily from exceeding road capacity, and road capacity is a function primarily of the size of the gap that we are taught to leave between cars. why are we taught to leave a 2 second gap between cars? in theory, that's how much time/space you need if the car in front of you decides to go full-tilt on the breaks with no warning.i've read about autonomous caravans (the article calls them platoons) where cars line up behind a follow vehicle. the follow-cars in that scenario typically also take over steering. like in the 2014 mercedes s-class from the article; a jovial safety engineer drove me around a test track, showing how the car can lock
onto a vehicle in front and follow it along the road at a safe distance. to follow
at a constant distance, the car’s computers take over not only braking and
accelerating, as with conventional adaptive cruise control, but steering too.
but why does it have to steer? if the car takes over just breaking and acceleration the software and sensors required are vastly simplified. given a target maximum speed, set by the user (so it can be set at 85mph and not 65mph), the car drives at the designated speed, or else maintains a close follow (250ms is ~30ft at 85mph). why can't the driver still be responsible for steering while this is happening?i think the key is giving the driver very high confidence that "no, there is no way that my car will let me rear-end the guy in front of me" even if you're just 30ft back at 85mph. that's not "scary close" but at that distance, you are trusting the car in front not to apply maximum breaks given human reaction times. computers could apply sufficient stopping force in time, although the responsiveness required of the algorithm might make regular driving a bit "twitchy" depending on the human driver you're following.i've never even driven a vehicle with adaptive cruise control, so i have no idea how "aggressive" the system is, or how it feels as the driver. i don't think any of the adaptive cruise systems out there will take you down to 0mph and then also start moving again, which seems like a must-have. but i bet if tesla added "maintain xmph or close follow" to their model s, owners would trust it, use it, and look quite badass in the process.you might benefit from some obvious (but not distracting) signal to other cars when this mode is active, and spend a boat-load of money on awareness, to try to avoid the inevitable "oh this asshole is tail-gating me, i better slow down."another caveat is that it's easier to steer smoothly at high speeds when you look far down the road ahead of you, which is kind of hard to do when you're breathing down the neck of the car in front of you. obviously if drivers start losing the ability to stay in lane when following that closely, the idea falls apart.ultimately i think "cruise control" is something every driver understands and trusts. make cruise control better. call it "super cruise" and put it in the tesla model s. try to educate other drivers about "super cruising" so that they know you're not actually driving like an ass. more brands will follow.if most highway traffic is caused by exceeding road capacity by just 1 or 2% (personally hard to believe, but that's what experts say) then in theory if "super cruise" reduced inter-car gap by 50% for 5% of cars on the highway, then poof no more traffic jams. of course as adoption increased much past 5%, only then you would need to add software to support zipper merging ;-) |
driverless cars are further away than you think
| i've always wondered if there isn't an intermediate step, a sort of 80/20 rule to gain most of the benefits for 20% of the work, without your car actually taking you for a drive while you sleep in the back seat.for example, lets assume highway traffic is caused primarily from exceeding road capacity, and road capacity is a function primarily of the size of the gap that we are taught to leave between cars. why are we taught to leave a 2 second gap between cars? in theory, that's how much time/space you need if the car in front of you decides to go full-tilt on the breaks with no warning.i've read about autonomous caravans (the article calls them platoons) where cars line up behind a follow vehicle. the follow-cars in that scenario typically also take over steering. like in the 2014 mercedes s-class from the article; a jovial safety engineer drove me around a test track, showing how the car can lock
onto a vehicle in front and follow it along the road at a safe distance. to follow
at a constant distance, the car’s computers take over not only braking and
accelerating, as with conventional adaptive cruise control, but steering too.
but why does it have to steer? if the car takes over just breaking and acceleration the software and sensors required are vastly simplified. given a target maximum speed, set by the user (so it can be set at 85mph and not 65mph), the car drives at the designated speed, or else maintains a close follow (250ms is ~30ft at 85mph). why can't the driver still be responsible for steering while this is happening?i think the key is giving the driver very high confidence that "no, there is no way that my car will let me rear-end the guy in front of me" even if you're just 30ft back at 85mph. that's not "scary close" but at that distance, you are trusting the car in front not to apply maximum breaks given human reaction times. computers could apply sufficient stopping force in time, although the responsiveness required of the algorithm might make regular driving a bit "twitchy" depending on the human driver you're following.i've never even driven a vehicle with adaptive cruise control, so i have no idea how "aggressive" the system is, or how it feels as the driver. i don't think any of the adaptive cruise systems out there will take you down to 0mph and then also start moving again, which seems like a must-have. but i bet if tesla added "maintain xmph or close follow" to their model s, owners would trust it, use it, and look quite badass in the process.you might benefit from some obvious (but not distracting) signal to other cars when this mode is active, and spend a boat-load of money on awareness, to try to avoid the inevitable "oh this asshole is tail-gating me, i better slow down."another caveat is that it's easier to steer smoothly at high speeds when you look far down the road ahead of you, which is kind of hard to do when you're breathing down the neck of the car in front of you. obviously if drivers start losing the ability to stay in lane when following that closely, the idea falls apart.ultimately i think "cruise control" is something every driver understands and trusts. make cruise control better. call it "super cruise" and put it in the tesla model s. try to educate other drivers about "super cruising" so that they know you're not actually driving like an ass. more brands will follow.if most highway traffic is caused by exceeding road capacity by just 1 or 2% (personally hard to believe, but that's what experts say) then in theory if "super cruise" reduced inter-car gap by 50% for 5% of cars on the highway, then poof no more traffic jams. of course as adoption increased much past 5%, only then you would need to add software to support zipper merging ;-) | this article is full of details and well worth a read. it's kind of a bummer for me, because i can't wait for the day when driverless cars replace the clueless drivers of minnesota among whom i have to commute. but the technical challenges of bringing driverless cars into routine consumer use are still immense.the article notes, about an expected transitional phase of development when driverless cars augment rather than replace human driving, "an important challenge with a system that drives all by itself, but only some of the time, is that it must be able to predict when it may be about to fail, to give the driver enough time to take over. this ability is limited by the range of a car’s sensors and by the inherent difficulty of predicting the outcome of a complex situation. 'maybe the driver is completely distracted,' werner huber said. 'he takes five, six, seven seconds to come back to the driving task—that means the car has to know [in advance] when its limitation is reached. the challenge is very big.'"my dream is the dream of fully door-to-door driverless cars. i think the article "why driverless cars are inevitable--and a good thing"<link> dan neil of the wall street journal, published last year, is a good commentary on why ordinary people will mostly be glad to use driverless cars, and regulators and insurers will be glad to nudge drivers to use them. but that's only if they work, and it's not clear how soon driverless cars will work reliably and be manufactured inexpensively enough to become routine on our streets and roads. |
hey php guys... oop question
i was wondering if you guys could explain something to me. i'm developing a new website based on cakephp and am curious as whether it would be beneficial (faster and less code) to replace:<p>//controller<p>$this-2data['text_learn'] = $this-2language-2get('text_learn');<p>//language<p>$_['text_learn'] = 'learn about our website';<p>//view<p>0?php echo $text_learn; ?2<p>simply with:<p>//view<p>0?php echo 'learn about our website'; ?2<p>i'm trying hard to understand why it would be beneficial to have all that excess code when i could simply echo out the text; especially in cases where it is only used once. | its about maintainability. is "learn about our website" the only thing you ever want to echo? will it always be only in english? might you want to echo it other places, or use it in different circumstances?try to think of instances where you might want to make a change that causes you to have to go and search through the code for a million different echoes spread all over the place. the 'extra code' is insurance against this eventuality.if its a short little one shot deal, then don't sweat it. | you should use the latter but pass it through the __() function. read the docs on i internationalisation. there is a pretty standard way of translating text in cake |
hey php guys... oop question
i was wondering if you guys could explain something to me. i'm developing a new website based on cakephp and am curious as whether it would be beneficial (faster and less code) to replace:<p>//controller<p>$this-2data['text_learn'] = $this-2language-2get('text_learn');<p>//language<p>$_['text_learn'] = 'learn about our website';<p>//view<p>0?php echo $text_learn; ?2<p>simply with:<p>//view<p>0?php echo 'learn about our website'; ?2<p>i'm trying hard to understand why it would be beneficial to have all that excess code when i could simply echo out the text; especially in cases where it is only used once. | you should use the latter but pass it through the __() function. read the docs on i internationalisation. there is a pretty standard way of translating text in cake | dude, before you get too deep - use kohana; it doesn't shackle you and it is quite powerful.i tried cake, symphony, and zend framework - they are all quite strong but cake and symphony make you build your app 'their way', zend framework is looser than the others (more a collection of libraries) but is bloated, slow, and over-engineered.my opinion is biased because i am a core developer.kohana's i18n system is pretty intuitive too.
<link> |
hey php guys... oop question
i was wondering if you guys could explain something to me. i'm developing a new website based on cakephp and am curious as whether it would be beneficial (faster and less code) to replace:<p>//controller<p>$this-2data['text_learn'] = $this-2language-2get('text_learn');<p>//language<p>$_['text_learn'] = 'learn about our website';<p>//view<p>0?php echo $text_learn; ?2<p>simply with:<p>//view<p>0?php echo 'learn about our website'; ?2<p>i'm trying hard to understand why it would be beneficial to have all that excess code when i could simply echo out the text; especially in cases where it is only used once. | dude, before you get too deep - use kohana; it doesn't shackle you and it is quite powerful.i tried cake, symphony, and zend framework - they are all quite strong but cake and symphony make you build your app 'their way', zend framework is looser than the others (more a collection of libraries) but is bloated, slow, and over-engineered.my opinion is biased because i am a core developer.kohana's i18n system is pretty intuitive too.
<link> | well i would just pass the language model into the view - it seems the better method (and still in keeping with mvc methodology).this is what i do with kohana (a similar framework to cakephp).umm if you have hard coded text (i.e. if that text never changes) why dont you just write it into the model? that seems perfectly fine (unless cakephp does something screwy with views i dont know about :)) in mvc terms. |
hey php guys... oop question
i was wondering if you guys could explain something to me. i'm developing a new website based on cakephp and am curious as whether it would be beneficial (faster and less code) to replace:<p>//controller<p>$this-2data['text_learn'] = $this-2language-2get('text_learn');<p>//language<p>$_['text_learn'] = 'learn about our website';<p>//view<p>0?php echo $text_learn; ?2<p>simply with:<p>//view<p>0?php echo 'learn about our website'; ?2<p>i'm trying hard to understand why it would be beneficial to have all that excess code when i could simply echo out the text; especially in cases where it is only used once. | well i would just pass the language model into the view - it seems the better method (and still in keeping with mvc methodology).this is what i do with kohana (a similar framework to cakephp).umm if you have hard coded text (i.e. if that text never changes) why dont you just write it into the model? that seems perfectly fine (unless cakephp does something screwy with views i dont know about :)) in mvc terms. | hey guys, thanks a bunch for the help. it makes better sense now. thinking about what yall said, how do can you load a controller from a controller. i tried:$this-2children = array(
'common/search',
'account/login'
);the first one (common/search) loads fine but the second one doesn't. am i doing this wrong? thanks in advance! |
ask pg: how would you fill out a yc application with yc as your idea?
for the sake of argument, suppose this is right after the 1st summer founders program or right after the talk you gave at harvard, whichever is more interesting. | apologies in advance to sam altman—i know writing hn comments is not work. but i had fun answering! back to the code.
_____________________________________________________________tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows he or she is an "animal," in the sense described in how to start a startup.paul and robert built the first saas company, viaweb, which allowed users to build their own stores on the web. it became yahoo stores after its acquisition.jessica is an excellent writer, marketing whiz and is already working on the idea for our second major product—a one-day version of our summer program in which a number of successful founders give talks to prospective hacker-founders. we think this will inspire even more of the kind of companies we like to invest in.trevor built a robot that duplicated the segway’s functionality in a weekend using off-the-shelf parts.tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows a high level of ability.trevor is working on the first self-balancing bipedal robot. it’s almost ready.robert discovered buffer overflow, which helped bring the internet into the mainstream press.jessica managed a highly successful rebranding of the investment bank adams harkness as vp of marketing.paul is the author of on lisp (1993) and ansi common lisp (1995). (have you ever tried programming in lisp?)for founders who are hackers: what cool things have you built?
(extra points for urls of demos or screenshots.)trevor—<link>
robert and paul—<link>
paul—<link> long have you known one another and how did you meet?several years, mostly at school. [ed. note: ???]what is your company going to make?a “summer school” for young, inexperienced hackers that are interested in starting a company but lack early-stage funding.the founders will meet with us once a week for dinner, during which a speaker from the technology industry will answer questions and speak from hard-won experience.if your project is software, what os(es) and language(s) will you use, and why?arcif you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?a few months—most of the work has been planning the program, the code for the site is fairly simple.if you have an online demo, what's the url? (big extra points for this.)<link> long will it take before you have a prototype? a beta? a version 1 you can charge for?once this application process concludes, the beta should be ready for launch.how will you partition the work this summer; who will work on what?all partners will help select companies and advise from past experience. paul and robert have more experience with investors and shepherding small companies through the necessary phases towards becoming big ones. jessica has experience with marketing, branding, and working with large companies. trevor is a hardware/software savant and is running a growing company of his own.if you already have a business plan, what's the url? (don't send us your business plan. put it on a server and tell us the url. ascii text preferred. don't password protect it.)[redacted]how will you make money? who will your customers be, how many are there, and how will they hear about you?our basic assumption is that young founders can succeed in building startups with good advising and seed capital. given our average investment is $18k for 6% of 8 companies, just once company has to be worth $2.4 million for us to break even.we’ll advertise in the computer science departments of prominent universities (e.g. harvard, mit) to recruit hackers who are looking for an alternative summer job to working at a big company.will you do price discrimination?we’ll give slightly more money to larger groups, although we suppose that’s “investment discrimination.”who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? who do you fear most?obvious investment-side competitors are early-stage vc firms, who have more money and the trappings of success. we’re banking on them ignoring our target group of early founders.the competitors we’re really afraid of are competitors for these hackers’ time and attention. fast-growing tech companies, graduate school, and even cushy jobs at big companies might have more superficial appeal. we need to make sure the most promising companies follow through on their potential.who will lose most if you succeed? (this need not be a competitor; tv networks have been hurt by email.)likely those very same competitors for our founders’ attention. google and graduate cs programs might lose some great hackers, although we think in the long run they’ll do better if younger programmers see the potential to start companies. the big losers will be the r&d/quant trading/it/etc. departments at ossified giant companies—they’ll lose the kind of brilliant people they use to bury in back offices.which companies, in order, are most likely to buy you?kpcb/sequoia
google
microsoftwhat do you know about your business that other companies in it just don't get?young, inexperienced founders can start massively successful companies. they don’t need much money or training—just seed capital and a push in the right direction.what's new about what you're doing?our focus on such early-stage companies and our plan to invest and work with these companies in batches are both quite novel. most funds operate asynchronously and make much larger investments in much later-stage companies.why would it be hard for someone else to duplicate?we have experience in starting companies from the ground up and insight into what matters (people, making something people want, thriftiness) and what doesn’t (“market size,” the initial idea, “professionalism,” having an office, etc.)have you made any discoveries you consider patentable?we think we move fast enough to not need patents.what might go wrong? (this is a test of imagination, not confidence.)perhaps all of the startups will fail. perhaps the founders will go back to school and the companies stagnate. perhaps founders do actually need experience at a “real job” to succeed in business. perhaps bill gates and larry and sergey are true needles in the haystack and we won’t be able to find hackers who could be huge successes.but we don’t think so.if you're already incorporated, when were you? who are the shareholders and what percent of the company do each own? if you’ve had funding, how much, at what valuation(s)?self-funded.if you're not incorporated yet, please list the percent of the company you plan to give each founder, and anyone else you plan to give stock to. (this question is more for you than us.)[ed. note: ???]if you'll have expenses beyond the living costs of your founders, internet access, server rental, etc., what will they be?space to hold our dinners, the food, and the investment money, of course.describe, in one sentence each, any companies any of you have started before. if they failed, why? (we consider failed companies valuable experience too.)paul and robert founded artix, which let art galleries go online. this failed (reason below) but became viaweb, which allowed people to build their own web stores.trevor started anybots, which has developed several wheel-based self-balancing robots and is closing on a bipedal robot.if you could trade a 100% chance of $1 million for a 10% chance of a larger amount, how large would it have to be? answer for each founder. (there is no right answer.)let’s go with the cold mathematical answer and say $10 million.if your startup seems at the end of the summer to have a good chance of making you rich, which of the founders would be likely to commit to continue working on it full time over the next couple years?all of us.which of the founders would still want to be working for this company in 10 years, if it were successful, and which would rather sell out earlier and do something else? (again, no right answer.)all of us [ed. note: just one year left!].are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? will any be under consulting contracts this summer?no.was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? if so, how can you safely use it? (open source is ok of course.)no.will any of the founders have other jobs, responsibilities, or consulting work this summer?no.tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered, and who discovered it. (the answer need not be remotely related to your project.)paul and robert discovered that art galleries didn’t want to go online in 1995. this may not seem surprising now, but it was to us then!what else would you have asked if you were us?there’s a joke here somewhere. | dear founders of y combinator,we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a spot in this year's y combinator class. do not take it personally. it does not reflect poorly on the quality of your company, "y combinator," or its founding idea. we received a huge number of compelling applications this year. unfortunately, there just weren't enough spots to go around, so we had to make some difficult choices. as a result, we were unable to admit "y combinator" to this year's y combinator batch. please do not be discouraged. many fantastic ideas like 'y combinator' were also not admitted. in fact, we strongly encourage 'y combinator' to apply again next year!sincerely,paul grahamy combinator |
ask pg: how would you fill out a yc application with yc as your idea?
for the sake of argument, suppose this is right after the 1st summer founders program or right after the talk you gave at harvard, whichever is more interesting. | dear founders of y combinator,we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a spot in this year's y combinator class. do not take it personally. it does not reflect poorly on the quality of your company, "y combinator," or its founding idea. we received a huge number of compelling applications this year. unfortunately, there just weren't enough spots to go around, so we had to make some difficult choices. as a result, we were unable to admit "y combinator" to this year's y combinator batch. please do not be discouraged. many fantastic ideas like 'y combinator' were also not admitted. in fact, we strongly encourage 'y combinator' to apply again next year!sincerely,paul grahamy combinator | this reminds me of the jeff bezos philosophy of writing a press release as the project proposal. |
ask pg: how would you fill out a yc application with yc as your idea?
for the sake of argument, suppose this is right after the 1st summer founders program or right after the talk you gave at harvard, whichever is more interesting. | this reminds me of the jeff bezos philosophy of writing a press release as the project proposal. | how would you fill out a "ask hn" submission asking hn how pg would fill out a yc application with yc as his idea? |
ask pg: how would you fill out a yc application with yc as your idea?
for the sake of argument, suppose this is right after the 1st summer founders program or right after the talk you gave at harvard, whichever is more interesting. | how would you fill out a "ask hn" submission asking hn how pg would fill out a yc application with yc as his idea? | i think it would be even better if it was for viaweb. |
ask yc: what's the best way to meet an angel investor?
hi,<p>we're a startup based in palo alto. we've been working on our project for more than 6 months and now close to a private beta. the problem is, my partner went to a full time job to pay rent, and can only work on the project on weekends. he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.<p>i figure if i can get some money (15k~20k) to support him to work on our project for a few months, it would go live pretty soon. a little money would really help a lot.<p>i wonder if you guys know how to get in touch with a angel investor? we have presentation movie and prototype but can't find someone to pitch.<p>i've tried:<p>- email vcs<p>- yc winter funding<p>- <a href="<link>" rel="nofollow"><link></a><p>- also considering taking a loan.<p>thank you,<p>leo lin | a number of folks have already suggested that you need to be introduced, and that's normally the best way to proceed.it seems like you can make progress without additional funding, just at a slower rate. is your partner really committed to the project? asking an angel to pay development salary for a co-founder may be a difficult sales pitch. it sounds like your partner may have lost faith and is now asking for money. you are much better off to proceed more slowly and not go into debt or waste time on trying to raise funds until you have something that you can sell, so that you can use additional funds to accelerate revenue. that being said there are several pitch events a month in silicon valley you can go to and meet angels and vc's.<link> see venture funding sig<link> see "first impressions" event; also you might check out the startup-u events, it's normally a chance to meet a vc or angel.<link> runs pitch events (with training) periodically<link> have a monthly pitch event (here an introduction probably helps)<link> have a monthly event (again an introduction helps)all of these are either free or a nominal charge. i wouldn't pay any "introduction fees or percentages" and i would not pay any "beauty contest fees" (e.g. kieretsu forum charge $3-5,000 to present). our firm does not help with fund raising, our focus is on early customers and early revenue, but please feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.sean murphy <link> | this post got gscott the money he was asking for... you could try doing the same.<link> |
ask yc: what's the best way to meet an angel investor?
hi,<p>we're a startup based in palo alto. we've been working on our project for more than 6 months and now close to a private beta. the problem is, my partner went to a full time job to pay rent, and can only work on the project on weekends. he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.<p>i figure if i can get some money (15k~20k) to support him to work on our project for a few months, it would go live pretty soon. a little money would really help a lot.<p>i wonder if you guys know how to get in touch with a angel investor? we have presentation movie and prototype but can't find someone to pitch.<p>i've tried:<p>- email vcs<p>- yc winter funding<p>- <a href="<link>" rel="nofollow"><link></a><p>- also considering taking a loan.<p>thank you,<p>leo lin | this post got gscott the money he was asking for... you could try doing the same.<link> | 2he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.my suggestion: learn to code. |
ask yc: what's the best way to meet an angel investor?
hi,<p>we're a startup based in palo alto. we've been working on our project for more than 6 months and now close to a private beta. the problem is, my partner went to a full time job to pay rent, and can only work on the project on weekends. he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.<p>i figure if i can get some money (15k~20k) to support him to work on our project for a few months, it would go live pretty soon. a little money would really help a lot.<p>i wonder if you guys know how to get in touch with a angel investor? we have presentation movie and prototype but can't find someone to pitch.<p>i've tried:<p>- email vcs<p>- yc winter funding<p>- <a href="<link>" rel="nofollow"><link></a><p>- also considering taking a loan.<p>thank you,<p>leo lin | 2he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.my suggestion: learn to code. | the _best_ way to meet an angel investor is to know someone and have them introduce you. that's the _best_ way, although probably not the easiest or most convenient.i know of several angel investors, but it all depends on what your product is, and who your ideal investor would be. why don't you send me a message and we'll chat? i'm one of the 3 guest bloggers at go big network. |
ask yc: what's the best way to meet an angel investor?
hi,<p>we're a startup based in palo alto. we've been working on our project for more than 6 months and now close to a private beta. the problem is, my partner went to a full time job to pay rent, and can only work on the project on weekends. he does all the development and thus our progress was stalled.<p>i figure if i can get some money (15k~20k) to support him to work on our project for a few months, it would go live pretty soon. a little money would really help a lot.<p>i wonder if you guys know how to get in touch with a angel investor? we have presentation movie and prototype but can't find someone to pitch.<p>i've tried:<p>- email vcs<p>- yc winter funding<p>- <a href="<link>" rel="nofollow"><link></a><p>- also considering taking a loan.<p>thank you,<p>leo lin | the _best_ way to meet an angel investor is to know someone and have them introduce you. that's the _best_ way, although probably not the easiest or most convenient.i know of several angel investors, but it all depends on what your product is, and who your ideal investor would be. why don't you send me a message and we'll chat? i'm one of the 3 guest bloggers at go big network. | 15-20k could be mustered with friends and family, i think. meebo maxed out credit cards before their a round.if the angel route is where you want to go, then referral is best. vcs and anges love recommendations from professors, especially if you have a new tech. try also contacting people you know in startups.if that doesn't work, go through an angel network to see their process and a screening. a lot of angels are becoming more open to small yc type investments. |
yep, facebook takes control of fb.com ahead of mail launch
| i love techcrunch. this article links to another article that's an hour old that says mail.facebook.com shows the exchange webmail portal, and so the new facebook mail thing is going to be exchange. nope guys, that's where the people that work at facebook get their webmail.breaking news: facebook's employees use email! | pointed out in the comments: why not use fb.me, which they already owned? fb.me is shorter and easier to remember ("facebook me" being a colloquialism these days, [email protected] doesn't sound bad at all). and it subtly encourages people to go back and use the facebook website instead of sticking with raw email, which i guarantee will be an underpinning to whatever secret email "project" they are finishing up. |
yep, facebook takes control of fb.com ahead of mail launch
| pointed out in the comments: why not use fb.me, which they already owned? fb.me is shorter and easier to remember ("facebook me" being a colloquialism these days, [email protected] doesn't sound bad at all). and it subtly encourages people to go back and use the facebook website instead of sticking with raw email, which i guarantee will be an underpinning to whatever secret email "project" they are finishing up. | for a few seconds there i was worried that microsoft might have teamed up with fb to create some strange web portal that included social media, email and documents. nightmare stuff...still, i didn't expect fb to be using exchange |
yep, facebook takes control of fb.com ahead of mail launch
| for a few seconds there i was worried that microsoft might have teamed up with fb to create some strange web portal that included social media, email and documents. nightmare stuff...still, i didn't expect fb to be using exchange | fb.com will jsut further confirm fb asa platformthe addition of the features that they have in their roadmap, such as video hosting, email, payments, apps etc really make a compelling case for a long haul plan.with the recent defection of high level googs - it is clear what is planned. |
yep, facebook takes control of fb.com ahead of mail launch
| fb.com will jsut further confirm fb asa platformthe addition of the features that they have in their roadmap, such as video hosting, email, payments, apps etc really make a compelling case for a long haul plan.with the recent defection of high level googs - it is clear what is planned. | omg how exciting!!!11111111 |
stuffing javascript into dns names
| making a script tag load an arbitrary remote script file without a space: 0script2s=document.createelement("script");
s.setattribute("src","<link>");
document.body.appendchild(s)0script2
for our convenience i put newlines in, just remove them. i checked it on the javascript: line (where you have to add javascript:, surround it with void(), and change the semicolons to commas). if that doesn't exactly work, something like it could. any js framework with the ability to use objects to set attributes on a new tag could be written more concisely but this doesn't depend on any frameworks. | the reverse dns bit would be amazing. do a bobby tables on it and watch sites fall just from visiting them.of course i wouldn't -do- such a thing, but it would be crazy to see. |
stuffing javascript into dns names
| the reverse dns bit would be amazing. do a bobby tables on it and watch sites fall just from visiting them.of course i wouldn't -do- such a thing, but it would be crazy to see. | they really mean it when they say "never trust user input". |
stuffing javascript into dns names
| they really mean it when they say "never trust user input". | even though he only brings it up at the end reverse dns entries could end up being the scariest. |
stuffing javascript into dns names
| even though he only brings it up at the end reverse dns entries could end up being the scariest. | other potential attack targets: admin uis for routers, webhosting cpanels, web crawlers with dns cache. |
steve wozniak: android will be the dominant smartphone platform
| i've been thinking a bit about this recently as i've seen a number of people getting android devices because they were offered them as an upgrade when they renewed their contract. they weren't interested in spending money to get an iphone but liked the idea of a decent browsing experience etc. all of them are happy with the device they have been given.
apple will become the apple of the phone market much as it was the apple of personal computer market.i'm think maybe some apple fans expect iphone to be the thing which makes the rest of the world wake up and switch to apple products. it's not. it was innovative and it meant a number of people who would never have bought a smart phone before did so. but apple don't seem intent on capturing the mass market. | update: woz gave engadget clarification, saying:"almost every app i have is better on the iphone.[he expects android] "to be a lot like windows... it can get greater marketshare and still be crappy."<link> |
steve wozniak: android will be the dominant smartphone platform
| update: woz gave engadget clarification, saying:"almost every app i have is better on the iphone.[he expects android] "to be a lot like windows... it can get greater marketshare and still be crappy."<link> | i agree, but for entirely different reasons. android will win for one reason alone: china.there are 900 million people with cell phones in china. it is currently and will continue to be the biggest cell phone market on the planet. however, the market's fragmented to little bits; shanzai phone here, nokia there, motorola sprinkled in between. but there are two driving forces common to all of the successful phones in china.1) price
2) adaptation to local needsshanzai (unbranded local phones) came out and took massive market share by having an almost immediate feedback loop with which to respond to customer demand. want two sim chips? you got it. want a phone so loud it turns into a boom box? we can do that. can you imagine steve jobs making these concessions?mediatek is cranking out android capable soc that bring the price of a smartphone down to $150 - unsubsidized. this is a price level that allows android to go shanzai - a very scary proposition for any large handset player. what now separates these 'low end' phones from the high end? they're not perfectly designed by jonathan ive, they're not super intuitive, they're not 4g, but they're good enough for china. remember how flip came out and just decimated traditional video recorders? it was good enough. mediatek's $150 android phones are good enough.if you really want to put the nail in the coffin, realize that if they're good enough for china, they're probably good enough for africa, for south america, and beyond. the iphone might retain the high end crown, but android will undoubtedly become the dominant global smartphone platform. |
steve wozniak: android will be the dominant smartphone platform
| i agree, but for entirely different reasons. android will win for one reason alone: china.there are 900 million people with cell phones in china. it is currently and will continue to be the biggest cell phone market on the planet. however, the market's fragmented to little bits; shanzai phone here, nokia there, motorola sprinkled in between. but there are two driving forces common to all of the successful phones in china.1) price
2) adaptation to local needsshanzai (unbranded local phones) came out and took massive market share by having an almost immediate feedback loop with which to respond to customer demand. want two sim chips? you got it. want a phone so loud it turns into a boom box? we can do that. can you imagine steve jobs making these concessions?mediatek is cranking out android capable soc that bring the price of a smartphone down to $150 - unsubsidized. this is a price level that allows android to go shanzai - a very scary proposition for any large handset player. what now separates these 'low end' phones from the high end? they're not perfectly designed by jonathan ive, they're not super intuitive, they're not 4g, but they're good enough for china. remember how flip came out and just decimated traditional video recorders? it was good enough. mediatek's $150 android phones are good enough.if you really want to put the nail in the coffin, realize that if they're good enough for china, they're probably good enough for africa, for south america, and beyond. the iphone might retain the high end crown, but android will undoubtedly become the dominant global smartphone platform. | woz is a great engineer but i don't know about his market prediction skills. anyone remember his last company, wheels of zues? i didn't think so. it was some kind of low power wireless, mesh network, gps something. i am sure it was fun to play with but not really a product. |
steve wozniak: android will be the dominant smartphone platform
| woz is a great engineer but i don't know about his market prediction skills. anyone remember his last company, wheels of zues? i didn't think so. it was some kind of low power wireless, mesh network, gps something. i am sure it was fun to play with but not really a product. | android won't become the dominant platform if for no other reasons than:(a) the carriers won't let any platform become dominant, as the owner of that platform would then be able to dictate terms. the original apple/at8t iphone deal was probably a one-off that only happened because (i) apple had a markedly superior product to anyone else at the time, and (ii) at8t wanted to increase their market share. [happy to be corrected on that latter point - i'm not in the usa, and i'm only going off what i've read online.] the failure for apple 8 verizon to come to any sort of similar agreement is more likely to be down to verizon not wanting to give ground, than technical issues like cdma. the carriers actively encourage alternative platforms as a means of playing divide-and-conquer against the manufacturers - look at how at8t is the us launch partner for windows mobile 7 rather than one of the other carriers; at8t clearly don't want to be (or be seen as) locked hand-in-hand with the iphone.(b) google won't want android to be dominant either, as this would bring political threats in terms of antitrust and the risk of being broken up. it's far better for android to "just" be market-leading or profitable, as this wouldn't attract such negative attention. and of course, if google services also appear on other platforms such as ios, then they're not completely losing out.have a look at this asymco post for some more points against a dominant platform: <link> |
mozilla's browserquest - massively multiplayer html5 experiment
| article about how the game works: <link> | npc soldiers with html5 orange shield are just too cute :)and this is actually a nice little game. buy then again, where is browserid and open badges support ? |
mozilla's browserquest - massively multiplayer html5 experiment
| npc soldiers with html5 orange shield are just too cute :)and this is actually a nice little game. buy then again, where is browserid and open badges support ? | i like how they made it really easy to get in. no signup just name your guy and go. i generally don't have time to play games however i appreciate the amount of work that goes into them. good job. |
mozilla's browserquest - massively multiplayer html5 experiment
| i like how they made it really easy to get in. no signup just name your guy and go. i generally don't have time to play games however i appreciate the amount of work that goes into them. good job. | awesome! thanks for the productivity kill mozilla. looks great and it's a lot of fun. now i want to learn how to do this stuff in the browser. |
mozilla's browserquest - massively multiplayer html5 experiment
| awesome! thanks for the productivity kill mozilla. looks great and it's a lot of fun. now i want to learn how to do this stuff in the browser. | brilliant game, the little easter eggs really made it worth playing.for anyone wondering about the 2 mystery achievements at the end; the clues are in client/js/game.js ( <link> ), line 278.hiding the clues in the code like that just adds to the coolness. great touch! |
ask hn: viability of a startup based on screen scraping?
i'm working on a side project that involves scraping pricing data from a site and making it much more accessible and usable, and ultimately providing a better answer to the type of question a user would normally have about the data in its original form (sorry, i'd rather not give specifics at this point). i am considering evolving it into a business, where users would pay for access. i was wondering, what are the legal ramifications of attempting such a business? are there any real world examples of successful businesses that used screen scraping at the core of their service/offering, as well as hurdles or obstacles they faced? finally, would this severely hamper my chances of securing funding? | i'm not a lawyer, but i did look at this issue about a year ago for a feature i was considering for our own startup. you can most certainly be sued, defending will be pricey, and you may lose the lawsuit - although case law in america isn't completely settled. the key case against is probably ebay vs. bidder's edge.having a single point of failure like this certainly won't help your fundraising efforts. if you're going to take the legal risk, why not bootstrap? that way you can put the money in your pocket as you go along and if the site does get shut down, at least you've extracted the profits along the way. | databases are protected under copyright law.also, most databases that you can scrape will contain sentinels to tip off the database owner that you've scraped their content. the sentinels are typically bogus records that are hard to spot, including them in your output will do a good job of proving that you ripped the data.if you're just going to regurgitate the data you would have to have a better excuse than 'making it more accessible and useable', you could offer your services to the current owner of the data. if they abandon the data that's a different story, but it sounds to me like they are not.another option is to license the data, simply contact them to ask if they have licensing options, this is the usual way to go about this.scraping is also a heavy drain on the resources of the company whose data you intend to harvest, this means that if they sue you successfully for breach of copyright that they have a fairly clear path to claiming damages.good luck!ps: if you have a corporate lawyer that would be a good spot to ask for advice. |
ask hn: viability of a startup based on screen scraping?
i'm working on a side project that involves scraping pricing data from a site and making it much more accessible and usable, and ultimately providing a better answer to the type of question a user would normally have about the data in its original form (sorry, i'd rather not give specifics at this point). i am considering evolving it into a business, where users would pay for access. i was wondering, what are the legal ramifications of attempting such a business? are there any real world examples of successful businesses that used screen scraping at the core of their service/offering, as well as hurdles or obstacles they faced? finally, would this severely hamper my chances of securing funding? | databases are protected under copyright law.also, most databases that you can scrape will contain sentinels to tip off the database owner that you've scraped their content. the sentinels are typically bogus records that are hard to spot, including them in your output will do a good job of proving that you ripped the data.if you're just going to regurgitate the data you would have to have a better excuse than 'making it more accessible and useable', you could offer your services to the current owner of the data. if they abandon the data that's a different story, but it sounds to me like they are not.another option is to license the data, simply contact them to ask if they have licensing options, this is the usual way to go about this.scraping is also a heavy drain on the resources of the company whose data you intend to harvest, this means that if they sue you successfully for breach of copyright that they have a fairly clear path to claiming damages.good luck!ps: if you have a corporate lawyer that would be a good spot to ask for advice. | yodlee seem to do okay out of it. their sdk offers a way to extract statement data from online banking sites which, i believe, is a glorified screen scraper.<link> |
ask hn: viability of a startup based on screen scraping?
i'm working on a side project that involves scraping pricing data from a site and making it much more accessible and usable, and ultimately providing a better answer to the type of question a user would normally have about the data in its original form (sorry, i'd rather not give specifics at this point). i am considering evolving it into a business, where users would pay for access. i was wondering, what are the legal ramifications of attempting such a business? are there any real world examples of successful businesses that used screen scraping at the core of their service/offering, as well as hurdles or obstacles they faced? finally, would this severely hamper my chances of securing funding? | yodlee seem to do okay out of it. their sdk offers a way to extract statement data from online banking sites which, i believe, is a glorified screen scraper.<link> | i think it's a legal can of worms any way you look at it, but especially if you plan to charge for it. i think you would have to get permission from all of the sites you plan to scrape before you sell the data to someone. it might be ok if you gave it away for free and linked back to the original source, but even then it's sketchy. |
ask hn: viability of a startup based on screen scraping?
i'm working on a side project that involves scraping pricing data from a site and making it much more accessible and usable, and ultimately providing a better answer to the type of question a user would normally have about the data in its original form (sorry, i'd rather not give specifics at this point). i am considering evolving it into a business, where users would pay for access. i was wondering, what are the legal ramifications of attempting such a business? are there any real world examples of successful businesses that used screen scraping at the core of their service/offering, as well as hurdles or obstacles they faced? finally, would this severely hamper my chances of securing funding? | i think it's a legal can of worms any way you look at it, but especially if you plan to charge for it. i think you would have to get permission from all of the sites you plan to scrape before you sell the data to someone. it might be ok if you gave it away for free and linked back to the original source, but even then it's sketchy. | i worked for a company that essentially was based on it, and know of another that via "scraping" and related automation makes its living as well. both have been alive and well for years and have grown quite a bit. the trick is that you work with the companies/sites you are scraping from the beginning as a business relationship of some kind if possible, and not as a parasitic relationship. basically if you are trying to help them sell their products/services/data and they benefit, even though you will likely have to fix the "scrapers" all the time, it works out. |
mega taking 12+ hours to upload a 2gb file, anyone else?
started the copy yesterday and still going today and i’m on a superfast connection | you're not on a super-fast connection. you're on an asymetric connection: super-fast download, to fill your brain with standard formating data, and super-slow upload, to limit the influence you may have on the other people.the internet has not be designed as an asymetrical or a star-topology network. what you are connecting with usual isp, is not to the internet, but to the isp network: a big star network, with the isp computers and routers at the central point, controlling your packets, and you at the tip of the branches, able to download fast what they want to feed you. they don't let you send anything fast, providing just the bandwidth to send back the ack packets.on the other hand, routing amongst billions of networks is not a solved problem yet, it would be quite difficult to implement a meshed network (where you'd connect not with an isp, but with your neighbors), and where every lan would be assigned an asn... | i tried uploading a small file multiple times with no success. it just doesn't upload. |
mega taking 12+ hours to upload a 2gb file, anyone else?
started the copy yesterday and still going today and i’m on a superfast connection | i tried uploading a small file multiple times with no success. it just doesn't upload. | can't even login now, if you look at the javascript console in chrome/ff you'll see the server giving 500 errors. looks like they under-anticipated the demand... |
mega taking 12+ hours to upload a 2gb file, anyone else?
started the copy yesterday and still going today and i’m on a superfast connection | can't even login now, if you look at the javascript console in chrome/ff you'll see the server giving 500 errors. looks like they under-anticipated the demand... | besides the unsuccesfull upload
by chance anyone knows the bandwith for free accounts?
i can't figure it out |
mega taking 12+ hours to upload a 2gb file, anyone else?
started the copy yesterday and still going today and i’m on a superfast connection | besides the unsuccesfull upload
by chance anyone knows the bandwith for free accounts?
i can't figure it out | i can't upload /anything/. remaining time just goes to nan. |
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