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Interesting I wonder if its seems easy because it’s explained simply or if it really is simple to put in place. I want to make a clone now, just to try. At least for this inspiration, this article was well worth the read. Thanks !

Once again a publication that points to the overconsumption problem of the wealthiest. I think we lack target models to show people what is too much. Carbon footprint calculators are a nice tool for this. Air travel impact always blow me off. I guess « Limits to growth » can count one more validating study.

Interested too. I did several full courses and exercises on it (Freecodecamp, W3, Mdn, Codepip…) and I still struggle a lot to create clear UI and have each HTML element where I want them. I am looking at CSS frameworks (BEM, Tailwind) but I would like to master « vanilla » CSS.

Following your thought process, even better is everyone on bikes. That’s what is happening slowly in many developed cities. Everyone on a motorcycle (mostly scooters) is what you have in southeast Asia. And true, it allows much higher densities than US highways packed with cars, but the price is reduced confort and security… Hard to make people accept that nowadays.

To give a contrarian view, I would happily become an electric bike customer. I think it is a great idea to apply electric motors to motorcycles : - Torque is usable at low speeds. To have the same experience in a ICE bike require a huge and comparably heavy motor, like the triumph speed triple or a Harley-Davidson. - Range is still a bit low but not far from the 250km/150miles an ICE bike can have. By the way, most bikers I know, myself included, have to stop before reaching such distances. Confort makes it hard to do more. - Speaking of confort, less noise and vibrations is a huge plus

Price is still high bit it will reduce. We also can hope for range increases too [1]. My main concern currently is charging time, even with fast charging, 40min is still a bit too much for me, and I hope that progress will be made in this area (with 800v architecture maybe?)

[1]: https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-bikes/2023-energica-...

Reading the news, Boeing seems much more affected by critical software bugs than Airbus. I am curious to know how their teams are structured.

As an aircraft industry nerd, I have understood that Boeing has a dedicated software team (with a dedicated software engineering VP [1]). Whereas Airbus seems to have a more integrated structure with software jobs in many teams. Moreover, Airbus was a pioneer in digitalization, while Boeing followed.

I have the feeling that a dedicated software département is more error-prone than if software is more integrated and that it could be generalized to other industries (banking, automotive…etc). Haven’t found any ressources or research paper about it however.

[1]: https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2020-11-06-Boeing-Appoints-Jinn...

I think the author wanted to improve on the more flawed idea of counting the number of hours worked. DORA metrics seems to be an even better improvement on the author’s propositions. Thanks for sharing, I did not knew about it and it is interesting. If I can share my experience, i know that at the root, any measure is flawed and incomplete. However it is always better to measure than not to measure if something is important to you. I know time spent is not a good measure, but I also know I will make more progress at a task if I allocate and track time spent on it. And engineering output is knowingly hard to measure.

Remember that bicycle are the most efficient way to move a human, that’s where the Steve Job’s quote « Computers are bicycles for the mind » comes from [1]. This efficiency never stops to amaze me.

And an electric bicycle makes it way more convenient while still being quite efficient. I share the love of electric bikes with the author and I am sure that huge progresses in UX and efficiency are it to come in the field. Would love to work on it one day ! (But hardware is hard…) I am happy to see the subject on HN frontpage. If anyone know any quirky projects on the subject, I would love to know more !

[1] : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c

Many people let 10-100s k€ objects daily out in the open, and it doesn’t seem to bother them. Cars are nowadays quite secure, but back in the 80’s, car theft was a real thing, and it did not stop people to use them. And motorbikes have the same problems as bicycles.

Bikes have to be better equipped and infrastructure should be developed, sure. But solutions exists. I know many people who are using electric bikes daily in neighborhoods known for theft of all kinds, and they never got their bike stolen. All they do is carefully lock them to a fixed point with a good U-lock or chain and keep the battery with them if they are really worried. Not much more a hassle than for a motorbike.

I recently discovered BEM and did not found any credible ranking of CSS methodologies more recent than https://2020.stateofcss.com/en-US/technologies/methodologies...

Is it still best-in-class or did it went out of fashion with the rise of Sass ?

I'll second @viraptor and @hops answers : It is the same cause as the rise of microservices and DevOps adoption, easier politics. I worked for a big old company, and most of the problems were political and administrative. One big SQL database is quite efficient until the entity that owns it does not agree with the new CTO strategy and any another critical part of the business. Add an incident that shows the low resilience of the model and it quickly becomes a political headache, while the technical solution still seems evident to everyone.

I have an incredible feeling that this quite short commencement speech is quite complete in its treatment of the subject of one’s relationship to career choices. Utility, originality and personal appreciation of tasks are key parameters in order to find a fulfilling job.

I see this as a win for everyone. Yes, Mercedes has been faster to get a legal approval but the fact that they got it is a huge win for the industry. Same as the rate of electrification, I think Tesla will not be hurt as they position themselves as enablers. Smart marketing move by the way.

And as « there is no such thing as bad publicity », it keeps people talking about the concept of autonomous vehicles. Which seems to work like a charm according to the number of comments I see for this post !

After several years dabbling with back-end languages and computer theory in my free-time without shipping anything, I have been surprised very recently by how much I enjoy learning front-end, especially for this. I can ship very small snippets of personal projects and get a real world feedback quite easily, which in turn fuel my motivation to keep coding. I feel it will be very fun and rewarding to add my back-end knowledge as soon as I will be able to.

So I second the great conclusion by the author : find stepping stones to ship frequently (and keep contact with potential customers), even if it is not exactly in your favourite field.

What struck me in this piece is that the author tried to experiment but not to understand what he was trying to do. Chemically/Physically I mean.

I became a way better cook when I understood that the Maillard reaction happens starting at 140°C and caramelisation at 180°C (Wondered why this is the default setting of for oven cooking ? Now you know).[1]

The whole thing of cooking, apart from flavour mixing, is to bring your food (onions or anything else) to a high enough temperature to attain the desired reaction. And it is way complex than it seems with several parameters to play with : pan material for general heat conduction, stirring will allow homogeneous temperature conduction in the pan and will give time to the highest bits to cool down, fat helps for local heat conduction, adding water or wine will detach flavorous parts after "maillared" or caramelized (known as deglaced). And certainly many more that I still ignore.

So to come back to the point of caramelized onions, time can help but it is not the unique parameter. As suggested in other comments, you can slow-cook during the night and achieve easily a perfect result. You can also do it quite quickly (I have done it in 5 to 10 min I think) with a strong enough heat source and a lot of stirring to avoid pyrolysis.

In the end, it is no wonder that the famous post of Tim Urban is called "The cook and the chef [...]". [2] All of this makes me wanting to know more about "first principles" of cooking (mainly for flavour mixing, I still have a lot to learn on this point). Maybe receipe writers are making them up on the go, but most of the one I read have at least a bit of "chef" in them to be roughly good in their parameter estimates.

I am surprised no one else bring that up in HN. My main excuse to indulge in frequent visits of this site is that I think most people here try to be first principle thinkers when they comment. By the way, this is a way to long post for here, but I hope it will be useful for curious cooks.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

[2]https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-s...

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Really interesting dive on an experiment. The part on failure has a lot of value. Everyone approach it differently but I felt like Cal has finely tuned its mindset around it. He makes it a happy moment, which is a hard thing to do even if celebration of failure is common in startup/HN world. Even more interesting is that he is using failure to learn, not by boringly doing a post-mortem, but by playing with the seemingly wasted ressources and time to have fun and develop his intuition.

At first, I thought this was distracting, now I totally see the value for HN (and me). I have to find a way to dive deeper in this topic of mindset around failure.

Yes, oil is used everywhere. And one reason why is because it is dirt-cheap compared to other materials. However, price does not account for the environmental price paid.

That's why even the article is telling that sail cargo ship projects are betting on regulation. If the adopted regulation is a cargo tax, we will use less and less oil. Of course, today we still need it and oil will be used to create new green solution. Even with a very high carbon tax, I assume there will still be use cases for oil because it is a really incredible material and energy source.

"The most versatile substance on the planet and they used it to make a frisbee. Typical of humans." Helen Cho - not very scientific but so truly mind-blowing.

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Personally, I have some tricks that seem to help. I force myself to come up with at least 3 things I am grateful for as part of my daily journaling. I started this some years ago and it really help to change your focus towards enjoying everything you already have access in modern society. Plus, learning about personal finance, investing and compounding made me think twice before spending. I end up valuing more financial freedom than incremental comfort/status upgrade.

Such a beautiful story in a few sentences. I think everyone can relate and simultaneously find how unique this experience was. Thanks for sharing, it adds life in the middle of arid subjects I can be caught into.

Is it really a problem ? I mean, apart from the quantity of lithium needed to create this « enormous » battery, is weight a real limitation factor ? We currently have no info on the full truck weight but I am sure Tesla found ways to optimise weight everywhere else. Mechanical components for a 1000000 miles rated vehicle are heavy and without a gearbox and a crankshaft, I assume the rest of the truck is lighter than its gas counterparts. I am no expert so maybe we are dealing with other orders of magnitude. Anyway, would this impact the maximum cargo weight ?

I think HN has found its perfect niche and business model, and has the level of simplicity required to never get old. Even if it has a dark « false productivity » side, i think its purpose goes towards progress of mankind. PG, YC and its administrators take way less from it than they create. A true inspiration for any project.

And there are even settings to limit your time on the website and avoid unproductive rabbit holes.

« Simplicity makes me happy. » Alicia Keys

(For a lack of a better quote without being cheesy)

What is interesting with this method is that it seems to work effortlessly even on the personal side. I always found easy to maintain an organization when it is shared ; it is the only way to keep the communication easy. Much harder for personal files and projects, which always end up in a big mess… I may give it a try, but I wonder if it is not just another method that will add to the existing mess.

Really nice copywriting !

Would you like to help me and my buddies learn to play cricket ? Its quite the same sport, and don’t worry, no one has ever played baseball or cricket in the team, they won’t notice ! And please, go straight to the full group « at scale ». We have to be quick, it seems to be the only way to look like people who have success in this other country, India !

This analogy is wonderful, I may reuse it someday. Thanks for sharing. However it makes me wonder about tailoring ideas. Of course it is necessary to adjust ideas to context, but how do you know when it is too much ?

I’m not entirely sure I would want software to be « engineered » like old farmhouses. They were not modular by design but often hacked to be tailored to the usage. It is not that different from hackable software. You can change part of it but everything is not possible. And it creates stability and reliability issues. I prefer engineered software like the superdome. You know what it is for, you can optimise it for its usage. And what is great with software is that when you don’t need it anymore, it doesn’t bother anyone. Unlike olympic games installations for example…

Yes, had trouble login, it took 3 attempts.

Interesting project and interesting…person ! At 17, that is quite a lot of done projects, congrats !

It is surely true for the density part. However I have now seen bike lanes that are two years old that would be efficiently « unjammed » by doubling. Another great aspect of bike density is that when you double the lane you allow way more traffic. When you are slow and small, you don’t need much space to overtake a slow electric bike.

One example : Paris

4 years ago, few bike lanes and very few bikes. Detractors of the newly created ones were arguing about the ressource waste.

Today it is one continuous line at rush hour and some lanes are completely jammed. I am not an expert, but what a change. The pandemic may have helped but it is a true transformation. Many people who would have never bike in Paris a few months ago now bike daily to commute. It certainly took more than just laying lanes, planning and choosing the right places to create lanes has certainly a lot to do with it. But once the main places were connected by safe lanes, it began and never stopped.

Millenia-old super dense city certainly helps too, nonetheless many thought it would be impossible. Would probably be harder in a less crowded place.

First and most recent english article I found about it : https://thewest.com.au/travel/europe/parisian-pedal-power-ng... Not the most precise, but describes well the feeling.

[edit] : typo and spacing

I personally think it is one quantitative indication of value. For a same widget at a unique retail price, multiple customer can find different value. It will depend on many parameters, sometime mesurable, but not always. An exemple : a new camera has the same retail price for an influencer as for an hobbyist. The hobbyist might find a lot of value, but will mesure it by the number of picture taken or the time spent with the camera, which it will find enjoyable. The influencer may find no measurable value by upgrading its equipment, but consumers will enjoy more its pictures and therefore it will help to build a more powerful brand. Price is only one metric.

I am wondering how these exemptions can be used as a loophole. Private drivers were one, why not private jets now ?

Oh I understand you ! I would have love to have design hints like that for one summer job I had. I was tasked to scan medical books with thousands of pages. I had little time constraints and could do it wherever I wanted. I was paid 80$ per book which I found crazy huge before starting. Even by optimizing every parameter of the hardware, software and my workspace, I couldn’t do more than a few 2-hour sessions per day and it took me several days per book. A boring job if there is one. I would certainly use it as a zen practice today but as a teenager, not really needing the money, I couldn’t find any value in it (after optimization).