MrDunham

So I have actually been in (close to) this situation.

i’ll address a couple of things though… First, since you plug-in every day at home it is very very rare for me to forget. Second, the total available range is still close to my old gas cars which means I need to have forgotten for many days in a row which in the last nine months has never happened.

BUT, I did say that I was low on energy on a day I needed to make a long drive…

Backstory was I was intentionally draining my battery over a period of about a week without charging (trying to recalibrate the gauges... very rare to do).

In the morning on a day I needed to make a three hour round-trip drive I realized I was at 20% power.

So I hightailed it to the nearest Tesla supercharger, plugged in, pulled out my laptop (I'm sitting on a giant battery... powering a MacBook is no issue) to get some work done, and 20 minutes later I was at 80% (enough for 200 miles - or my entire round trip).

So the power issue was caused semi-intentionally and entirely my fault but also it took very little time to solve it. It would be a bigger issue for somebody who isn’t near a supercharger (and no 220 line at home as they'll go 0->full overnight) but again it is very very easy to remember to plug-in at night and many/most people would generally need to forget to charge for at least three or four days before it becomes an issue.

Even though I own a Tesla and love it I can’t see a fully electric, long-haul semi making sense for quite some time.

For consumers (at least in my own experience) there is a range threshold that, once surpassed, means I almost never have to worry about fill ups again. So the Every day convenience outweighs the once or twice a year inconvenience of longer “fill ups“ vs gas for extended drives.

I bought mine because I hate little annoyances like having to remember/go to the gas station and fill up periodically.

For long-haul trucking though Tesla's benefits would be in automation/assisted driving, not in electrification. Short of some sort of carbon credits/regulations it’s difficult to imagine widespread adoption of a technology that has more downtime and higher initial costs than a previous technology.

The stop/start of small truck deliveries (and subsequent energy recapture) makes sense but for long-haul I can’t see it feasible until the battery energy densities jump by a sizable margin without a corresponding increase in price.

And at that point there's still few financial advantages of electrification I can think of... what am I missing there?

Completely agree. I had a thermodynamics teacher in college say “in the history of transportation we’ve never switched to something powered by lower energy density [than the previous mode of transportation]"

in other words “energy density wins the day".*

That was running through my head when I read they were switching to technology with lower energy density but, to your point and to the article's point, it’s really about systems level energy density and not cell level energy density.

* with Tesla we have now seen that there is another factor, convenience, that my professor did not account for. I own a Tesla and the primary selling point… OK it was acceleration… But the secondary selling point was never having to go to a gas station again when I am just barely going to make the meeting and forgot to fill my gas tank the night before.

The linked article's title is "Tesla made $1.6 billion in Q3, is switching to LFP batteries globally" and it's a little more appropriate as it split about 50-50 between discussing earnings and discussing battery technology.

I say this because there’s another article from the New York Times about Tesla‘s earnings on HN's front page and this one from Ars is more technical, more straightforwardly written, and much less hyperbolic than the NYT version. (This one focuses on earnings and potential major changes that could impact the bottom line versus New York Times spends 50% of their article discussing government inquiries into autopilot.)

I can't update the title but would recommend this article over the New York Times one.

Agreed! Apollo is great (but I’m biased, see below.)

I lived with Apollo’s dev for 3 months ~a decade ago and can say he was a super friendly, genuine guy and a was great roommate. Best of the ~500 people that came through our hacker house. Seems to really care about his users, too.

So for all of Reddit’s dark patterns and anti user behavior it seems that he’ll do right by users.

Really happy to see HN sending support for his product.

I’m very close with someone who works at a FB data center and was discussing this exact issue.

I can only speak to one problem I know of (and am rather sure I can share): a spike might trip a bunch of breakers at the data center.

BUT, unlike me at home, FBs policy is to never flip a circuit back on until you’re positive of the root cause of said trip.

By itself that could compound issues and delay ramp up time as they’d work to be sure no electrical components actually sorted/blew/etc. A potentially time sucking task given these buildings could be measured in whole units of football fields.

This is correct. We even have a brain circuit for this: the reticulating activating system.

It's the reason I hadn't seen a Volvo for over 10 years until I mentioned that fact, then saw three that day.

So to your point, the RAS filters out/ignores 99 ads but will bring to your attention the one that is similar to something you've mentioned recently.

I just started switching to Home Assistant and LOVE it. Rather shocked to see this is just now being posted to HN to be honest.

Up until the switch I’ve had a patchwork system consisting of Alexa, Smart Life (app), Smart Things, and a lot of digital duct tape.

Having both 1) a central "command center" and 2) Zigbee/Z-Wave capabilities (requires a dongle) suddenly opens up so much more opportunities than WiFi components alone. EG I've attached door sensors to my garage doors to trigger lights and notify my dumbass when I leave the garage open at night.

Plus, I'm no longer locked into one brand's ecosystem and can keep my patchwork hardware setup.

Big fan here, strongly recommended.

Note: I have no association with any smart home brand/equipment nor home assistant… though I'd consider being associated with HA.

Headline is a bit clickbaity, but interesting article and experiment.

Man built a testing system to assemble and disassemble a pair of lego blocks. It took 37k loops to finally break them.

The real magic number is one. One brick stepped on barefoot is enough to make me break it.

Huh, I read the article differently. I read it as more of the difference between cheap sunglasses and a nice brand-name pair. With the cheap ones if they get lost/scratched/smashed you don’t end up caring as much and have less worry about it.

But… I could easily have read into the article wrong.

(PS I agree with your “buy nice” sentiment. And Webers are fantastic grills.)

In 2009 I bought an old 1960s muscle car. The interior and underbody were all nice but the paint was really needing an update (scratched, chipped, etc).

Fast forward a few years, extensive bodywork, and a whole lot of cash and the car had show car quality paint.

But there were certainly days that I missed driving around my old, beaten up paint job car. I would leave my coffee mug on the roof as I got in, would park wherever I wanted, and I generally didn’t worry about the car much. Now I fret over parking it and have to walk from the back of any lot.

I’m not complaining… I certainly love driving around shiny car. But it’s an interesting observation that the cheap/beaten up version had virtues that I miss - to the article’s point.

I’ll look them up immediately, thank you! The grit issue is seriously the number one thing that I dislike about the process

This (for cold brew, at least).

I’ve been using a muslin/“nut milk” bag for years. I’ll grind a pound of coffee and let it steep for a couple of days in roughly a gallon of water, then pour it into a dispenser that I can leave in the refrigerator.

I’m no coffee snob but to me the flavor keeps extremely well.

The only thing I found is that even the finest mesh bag leaves a considerable amount of grit so I pour that through a paper filter. Hard to beat fantastic coffee at the turn of a spigot.

Parent of a 1.5 year old here. Can confirm - several colds.

To the parent comment's point though, I haven’t had any colds in the last year where my daughter wasn’t sick first

> "I'm probably wasting my time here"

Realistically, you've likely answered your question regarding if it's worth it to fight it out.

Then again, if you've signed docs that say you own X shares, then Jim can't just take those away (as the parent poster mentioned).

Jim could issue a bunch of new stock (watering you down), or (if it's an LLC/s-corp with pass-through income) generate a bunch of phantom income to drown you in taxes, or create a new corp and sell the IP from oldCorp to newCorp for a pittance (bit of a quagmire there as you'd have good grounds to sue).

All of these present challenges, though.

Your best bet may be to determine a transition period where, at the end, he pays you for your shares and you walk away. Your chances of staying as an equity owner given the capitalization of the biz (~$1000, if I understand correctly, as his $12k was spent outside of the biz).

Of course, this should be in writing, signed, etc.

Not to mention that Jim could be in a precarious position. OP retains all of their shares that were initially agreed upon so offering to retroactively do vesting helps Jim a bit.

However, since OPs cofounder paid out of pocket for the app, I'm not sure what the StartupInc actually owns. But that also means the possibility of piercing the corporate veil - which is also bad.

I'm not a lawyer, but I did have a startup where my cofounder gutted the company after trying to stage a coup - then created a very similar company. He'd signed all the NDAs, non-competes (these ARE enforceable, even in CA, with co-founders/execs) etc.

I never went after him.

Instead, I waited to see: would he be able to steal my idea, connections, and clients to be successful on his own. If so, I planned on getting my share through legal proceedings.

Short version, a few years later one of his 3 co-founders quit, a year later the other did, and now the company is gone.

I'll avoid giving OP advice based on my one story, but another poster made a good point: there is very little to be gained.

Legally, though, I believe that - short of creating a new corporate entity or watering down the stock (both possible, though they come with risks RE getting sued by OP) - OP will retain all of their shares.

Of course, being not a lawyer, there are likely major gaps in my understanding and OP should at least have a chat with one.

Related headline: Journalist uses 'dubious tactics' in headline to 'clickfarm' population.

I'm truly tired of this media tactic to create/hijack curiosity (IE "wtf is a 'polar vortex'") and/or scare quotes to generate page views.

Perhaps you could share a little more background about yourself and your interests (EG front end Development, extensive experience in X, 'I love to ski', etc.)? While I am not a Facebook employee, my wife is (we left the bay area a year ago, however, so she would not be able to help you directly).

Facebook employees are incentivized to bring in top-tier talent, so knowing your background might help uncover a person in a similar org with similar interests that could get to know and trust you before putting their reputation on the line.

Just my thoughts/2 cents - but given how embattled Facebook has been over the last 6 to 12 months I would want to build some trust before putting my reputation on the line if I was working for the 'book.

Good luck!

I love listening to my engineers. They usually know how to solve something faster and more elegantly then I do.

But I'm someone who will learn enough Node/React/python to understand what can, and can't, be done.

I was a bit apprehensive to post this as it has a very personal story of complete failure. But given how valuable it was for myself I figured I owed the rest of HN. Love to hear feedback of what resonated or did not so I can improve. Thanks!

edit you made my day, thank you /edit

Thanks. In trying to boil down the article, may have over boiled. Hard when all I'm thinking about is executing ignition next month. They did a nice job, and I'm quite thankful for it.

Tl;Dr: Prebacked and Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield are teaming up to throw a hackathon to build revenue generating startups on May 4th.

Just had a similar problem. Forgot PW, logged in as MrDunham and mrdunham (also returns lower case) - no 'pw reset'. Tried again later, magic reset pw came up.

I'm torn here. Probably won't post them all - though I'm sure we'll be posting some of them (there may be some problems our partners would be unhappy about us posting.)

Thanks for the questions!

If you pique whomever pitches the initial problem they agree to mentor your team over three months of building out the product. It would be good to go in with the expectation of starting a real company from this.

If you take seed funding, you and the Band of Angels work out terms. It will probably include setting up a Delaware C corp, equity splits, etc. (I do not speak for them though). Basically, it's figured out as you're taking the seed prize and after the event.

"What if 2 weeks later I discover that the market for the product doesn't exist? Can I instead build out the product and then sell the intellectual property to the pitch company?"

-You're welcome to do that. I won't stop you.

"IP ownership"

-We're not directly linked here, but we've been very clear that in the spirit of the event teams should have all IP ownership. My take is it's equivalent to going into the doctor's office saying "my food hurts" and the doctor analyzing, designing, and building a special shoe that fixes your pain. You wouldn't have IP ownership of the shoe, because all you did was say that your foot hurts. I can make no promises except that we'll be very clear and are partners understand this.

-Ok I read that wrong, though the above is a good thing to include. IP ownership would be the team's and within the team it's up to all of you to figure it out.

"Are the funders and the pitchers one and the same or different companies?"

Primary funders are the Band of Angels, who are not pitching at this one. Funders at the 3 month mark might be the same as the pitchers (that was always the point). You're not committed to take anything, even if you worked on their problem. Given that those pitching are agreeing to help take your company off the ground after the hackathon, hopefully you'd consider their investment.

Let me know if you need more clarification - I'll be adding your questions to the FAQ this weekend. And thanks!

Great questions, I'll answer in-line:

-What if the winning hackers win at two of your events... -Being that this is invite only - I don't plan on having the same teams at two events.

-Is the money in the form of 'a gift... -Nope, it's an actual seed investment from an angel group. Terms, equity, etc. will apply (but don't have to be accepted if you'd rather bootstrap)

-Who would collect the money, just one of them in their bank account? -Good question, and one I need to think more on. The assumption, since it's an investment, is that they'd create a Delaware C corp and it would be property of the newly founded company. We're not directly involved in this process but will be trying to help keep things moving smoothly.

-RE Herding cats: -Most investments will come after a 3 month 'build-a-thon' for teams that impressed their investor/company partner. Band of Angel investments (aka prizes) might happen at the end of the weekend.

It basically means you have to chat with the Band of Angels and Originate.

For example, the Band's prize is in the form of seed funding. How exactly that looks might change based on the team.

For Originate it includes: - the award is for in-kind investment of Originate services and not convertible to cash - non-transferable - resources will be assigned at Orignate's sole discretion - work will be delivered from an Originate office

You don't have to accept any prizes that are given, it's just things we've put together to solve problems that arise when trying to take a company off the ground. I don't expect you to trust me, but I've been extremely involved with the Hacker Dojo, run a hacker house, and routinely fight against anything that takes advantage of hackers. I hope that helps

Aaaaand we're back.

haha true. Google is taking their sweet time getting things spooled up

Whoops, blew threw my bandwidth. One sec