andor436

Can confirm. (I am 50% of the original engineering team. @tashian is the other/smarter!)

Oh wow thank you, I’ve looked for this for years. I am pretty sure this story and King’s Quest are the two major reasons I ended up in computer engineering.

[edit: already answered in the parent thread!]

Wasn’t there an old Nova episode about this on PBS? I vaguely recall it, and have always wanted to rewatch as an adult. Just a fantastic (real!) story.

Hm, this is not Velodyne's first announcement of a solid state lidar breakthrough.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sens...

Several other companies are working on these (Quanergy, Blackmore) too, but so far they seem to be just press releases. Hopefully we'll see some real ones soon; the current state of the art for wide field lidar are many thousands of dollars and (imo) too fragile for use in production vehicles.

And it helps address the racism issues they've been having trouble with.

I'm a host as well, and their new stats section breaks down the reviews in detail. You can see who left what stars. Don't know if this works the same for the traveler.

Hi Peter, thanks for doing this!

My company currently employs a brilliant, in my opinion, Argentine scientist. We'd love to bring him to the US periodically, but he can't get a visa as he owns no property in Argentina, isn't married, etc. Short of meeting in a more neutral country do we have any options?

As usual with AWS (or anything I guess) there's more than one way to accomplish a particular goal. How much of Amazon's Elastic Container Service is replicated by Docker for AWS? I'm currently using ECS + Docker but this looks potentially simpler.

Step 0: Don't call your employees "remote." You're either a distributed team, or you're not really trying.

That's not quite what the wholesale rate means in the US; we have what you describe but it's typically referred to as the spot market. The wholesale rate when used by politicians and the media here usually (as far as I know) refers to the monthly auction clearing rate, which is much more stable. There is also a day-ahead wholesale rate, but the net metering rollback bills I've read recently are all based on the monthly auction rate.

While you wait, check out http://stackoverflow.com/a/23500670/229006

My plan is to rely on these functions for now, and switch to the native implementations once 9.5 is production ready on RDS.

For me it shaves several minutes (about 80% of the total time) off a build/deploy cycle, which is huge.

The water sources themselves are ok. (They could be much cleaner of course.) It's the aging and decaying infrastructure that brings the water from the source to a Flint homeowner's sink that is causing the issue. Lead is not in the source water; it's in the pipes, solder joints, fixtures, etc. When the State switched Flint over from Detroit's Lake Huron source to the Flint River, the water chemistry change was not correctly accounted for, and thus caused excessive amounts of lead to leach into the water on its way through the system.

The State DEQ applied the wrong federal standards: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/10/top_state_...

Don't forget that it was a State-appointed emergency manager that made the water source switch (from Detroit's supply to the Flint River), and the State DEQ that didn't enforce the correct Federal EPA guidelines for water corrosiveness. It's true that Flint has been mismanaged at the local level, but the State has fouled things up pretty well too.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/10/top_state_...

[edit to add link]

Excellent. I also enjoyed Brian Greene's visuals on the Late Show recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjFjC30-4A

However, there's a big difference between electric resistive heating (generating heat) versus electric heat pumps (moving heat around.) The latter can be 3x or more efficient than the former.

Heat pump! You can get wall mounted units that work just like an A/C (but in reverse of course.) Efficiencies have gotten pretty good in the last decade. Check out units made by Daiken, Hitachi, Mitsubishi for example. I know they make multi-room versions. You'll need to run the refrigerant lines, but that's usually a much smaller task than adding ducting.

Something's wrong here, because the out of pocket max for a year (which for BCBS of MI is not the same as the deductible) cannot exceed $13,200 a year for a family. By law.

See https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...

I had a BCBS/MI family plan through the marketplace up until last month. (Silver Multi State) It cost $1,000/month and had a $6,000 (family) deductible, after which BCBS pays 80% of all costs until you hit that out of pocket max. It also allows you to bank $6,500 a year in an HSA pre-tax, which basically covers the deductible.

[edit] Forgot to mention that this plan included medical, dental, and vision.

I've been to plenty, and at the national level there is ample patriotism for one's country, regardless of nationality. I do agree with your point. I just don't think it's quite as clear-cut as you suggest.

For the Twitter-inclined follow Emily Lakdawalla [1] - she is usually mere seconds behind the actual data, which is pretty amazing.

[1] https://twitter.com/elakdawalla

Have you never attended a European football match?!

Social security, tax benefits, death benefits (including child custody), health insurance coverage, legal (marital communications privilege) There are probably thousands of these baked into our state and federal laws.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

and http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benef...

I don't know. They had to start by striking down the federal benefits part of DoMA, and then return the issue to the lower courts to build up sufficient decisions (and precedent.) It takes time to do this. Frankly I'm astonished (and proud) that public opinion has shifted so quickly.

As a software engineer with the same career length as the author, it really hurts to read things like this and realize our respective pay is so different for what feels like arbitrary reasons.

I'm a part owner (one of hundreds!) of a brewpub in Austin called Black Star. It's cooperatively run, both the restaurant side and the organization itself. One of our core principles is to pay each member of the staff a livable wage, and to not allow tipping in the brewpub. It's been very successful, and I hope something that will spread.

A bit about it here: http://www.blackstar.coop/blog/2015/5/4/black-star-co-op-ups...

You can get involved with Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment (RAISE) here: http://rocunited.org/our-work/high-road/raise/

This isn't bad: https://smartasset.com/infographic/startup

Although it's not as clear as a spreadsheet would be, I think it's easier to start with.

Good point. It's unclear to me though. In some places (Hawaii, California, Germany) where there's huge acceptance of renewables and much shorter payback periods I believe a PV system would add value to a sale. Here in Michigan it's much less clear - plenty of my neighbors think it's ugly and an eyesore, or are somehow opposed to the whole concept. So I am pretty sure in the end it's a net zero here (no pun intended!)

Yes, I am unfortunately. I am in the midst of protesting an assessment now for a system I installed last year. See this pdf (sorry), page 17: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpsc/marketbarrierssolarin...

Solar systems are considered "real" property, i.e. property that is permanently attached to the house, and thus subject to taxation.

I also live in Michigan, and can tell you it will be a money loser for one major reason: the full cost of the system you install will be added to your local property tax valuation, as the state tax exemption on renewable energy equipment was nullified several years ago and never replaced. In my case I had $500 in taxes added to my annual bill, which outpaces the value of the energy I produce and creates an infinite payback period.

Wait until this tax issue is resolved, then it will actually make good sense here. (It's sunnier than most people think!)