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designtofly

591 karma · joined March 19, 2008

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designtofly··on Amazon ‘flooded by fake five-star reviews’ – report
It has gotten awful. Every single time I've searched for a generic product (or even a specific brand + model), I'm inundated with these nonsense branded listings. I'm very close to canceling my Prime membership.

I think the best thing that Amazon has accomplished is pushing other retailers to improve their fulfillment process. Just yesterday, instead of dealing with the endless stream of copycat products on Amazon, I purchased a bunch of running gear directly from Nike and it was shipped in less than 12 hours.

designtofly··on Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary
I think that humanity is going to look back and see pesticides and herbicides as one of the worst mistakes in history. It's slowly becoming clear just how damaging they are to the world's ecosystem. I urge everyone to stop using them, especially for absolutely needless things like killing dandelions and other vanity uses.
designtofly··on YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”
What bypass ratio are your turbofans? Your argument seems to be that because it's a turbofan (bypass > 0), you've "solved" all of the issues with turbojets. But at this size, you've still got a bypass ratio that's much closer to a turbojet than a modern commercial airline engine.
designtofly··on Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers
In addition to most "middle class" wealth being tied up in home equity, I would wager that the vast majority of "investments" is tied up in retirement funds. Very few middle class people have regular income from investments. Outside of Silicon Valley where RSUs and ESPPs are common, few people can rely on stocks or other equities to generate any usable income outside of retirement.
designtofly··on Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook
I'm glad this story has gone viral recently. Hopefully there will be more pressure to stop this practice.

I've been using Android for a number of years now and between the handset manufacturers and the wireless providers, there has been undeletable crapware since the beginning. I've been slowly modifying my behavior in response. I stopped buying phones directly from the wireless providers (e.g. Verizon). This has noticeably improved my experience. Every time I upgrade my phone, I look into the Google flagship Android phones, but they always have some critical flaws that drive me to buy the Samsung Galaxy phones. The same thing happened a few months ago when I chose the Galaxy S9+ over the Pixel 3's. I also always think about switching to Apple iPhone, since I do think they take user experience and privacy more seriously than Google Android.

While I'm on the subject. Samsung, please get rid of Bixby and all of your crappy Samsung apps. I hate the feeling that there's two OS's loaded on my phone... the Android layer and the Samsung layer (which I never use but always get prompted for unless I figure out how to disable it).

designtofly··on Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews
I've noticed that sellers have been gaming this metric as well. I was recently shopping for a phone case and other phone accessories. What I found is that sellers are re-purposing SKUs from other highly rated products. I found a ~4.5+ star product with thousands of reviews but saw that most of the reviews were for a completely different item that is no longer being sold. So they'll take a highly rated product, put a different item in its place.
designtofly··on Ask HN: Looking for a Book on Cellular Automata
Although Shalizi has his own biases and is pretty opinionated, his review of "A New Kind of Science" is quite interesting and is worth considering: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/
designtofly··on Salary Negotiation
Fair point--you have no idea what happens behind closed doors and what the available budgets are. And you never will. Perhaps the hiring manager decided they are willing to pay 2x the market rate because their pain is quite high. But how likely is it, due to your refusal to name a number, that the company is going to reveal the top of their range? So, yes, there is an information disparity.

But I still think that refusing to name a number shouldn't be the number one point in all of these discussions and blog posts about salary negotiation. You're right, when there are huge amounts of information disparity, either because a company's pain point is significantly higher than market rates would imply, or because a candidate has a rare and unique skill that cannot be easily found, then all of the entry-level negotiating tactics go out the window. But for fair-market jobs and candidates, I think you should be able to know your value well and refusing to name a number is a waste of time and energy.

designtofly··on Salary Negotiation
I don't understand your argument. I never said any value is fixed. Of course a person's value changes from role to role and from company to company. Part of doing your research is understanding the pain points for the company and the value you bring by fixing those pain points.

If you disagree with "a professional knows their value," what are you arguing? That "a professional doesn't know their value?"

designtofly··on Salary Negotiation
I agree with you. I see this advice constantly parroted about, but I just cringe at the amount of work these people go through to avoid naming a number. If you want to deflect the first time the question is asked, fine. But if you have to deflect more than once, you won't come off like a professional. A professional knows their value. If you follow all of the rest of the advice, like doing your research, you'll know what you are worth and it shouldn't be a problem naming a fair price.

The other point I have is that the first number isn't all that important. Yes, it might anchor the starting point, but you'll be in a stronger negotiating position when the written offer is actually made.

I just went through this recently. Yes, their hiring manager asked me what my requirement was for a salary and I gave them a number without any fuss. In their first formal offer, they gave me the number I wanted; however, by that point in the hiring process, it was clear that I was a top candidate, and with other competing offers, I was able to get them to come up another 30%.

In the end, I don't think the best approach is to force the company to make the first offer. They aren't going to give their best offer if you force them to make the first move. The only time that strategy might make sense is if your best number is much lower than their worst number; in that case, you did a lousy job in the research phase and need to take a step back.

designtofly··on Could Harvesting Fog Help Solve the World’s Water Crisis?
For those that are interested in data science, there is this related challenge: The Tableau Foundation Challenge: From Fog Nets to Neural Nets https://www.drivendata.org/competitions/9/
designtofly··on PriceZombie is shutting down
CCC does serve affiliate links. If you go to any product page on CCC and click the "Buy" button, you'll end up at Amazon and the URL will have the "tag=camelproducts-20" for their affiliate code in the URL. I'm sure every Amazon-bound link on their website or browser plug-in will do the same.
designtofly··on Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
But those intakes don't work for free. You will encounter huge losses and drag penalties. And military jets aren't designed to fly 3500 miles supersonically the entire way. The vast majority of miltiary jets have a maximum supersonic time that can be measured in minutes.
designtofly··on Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
From the Bloomberg article: "Boom’s software can also run millions of computer simulations a day on its designs, so the startup doesn’t have to spend months tweaking things in wind tunnels."

Can you elaborate what computer simulations this is referring to?

designtofly··on LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value
And I absolutely hate that they track which profiles you view and then display that information in the side bar under "people who viewed this profile also viewed". Unless you're looking at high profile person with millions of views, the "also viewed" list becomes a list of friends and not people in the same field or similar job profiles. If I ever have to click on a LinkedIn link, I always go into incognito mode.
designtofly··on Technology Incubators Changing The World
Corresponding slide show:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/16/technology-incubators-chang...

designtofly··on China: Closing for Business?
For those that prefer the print version: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_14/b41...
designtofly··on 50 great examples of infographics
They are great, but only if the definition of great does not include being effective.
designtofly··on Obama axes NASA moon plan in new budget
I certainly consider this bad news. I know there's a lot of people on here who poo-poo manned spaceflight as needlessly expensive and unnecessary. But let me say this, manned flight (both air and space) as inspiration is the number one reason that I'm an aerospace engineer today. I know I'm not alone in this. While moves like these make economic sense in the short term, I have no doubt that in the long term, they will rob this industry of talented and inspired people... in some ways, the lack of progress in aerospace in the last 30 years already has shown this to be true.

I'd rather the administration issue grand challenges in all fields (especially aerospace) in order to inspire us today and future generations. Having an inspired workforce is the most critical challenge and essential to continued success and growth in any field.

edited to add: In case it wasn't clear, my point is that there is no way I'd be an aerospace engineer today if the aerospace vehicles and missions in my youth were unmanned/robotic. Yes, robotics is "cool"... but it's not even in the same league as manned flight when it comes to inspiration for me.

designtofly··on Boeing 787 First Flight Today 10AM PT
My guess is that it's the exhaust for the Auxiliary Power Unit [1]. The APU is essentially a small gas turbine generator, so the exhaust temperature is approximately 1000°C. This is way above the melting temperature of composites, and even aluminum.

This site [2] has a very good discussion about the Boeing 737 APU and APU exhaust (which they call an "Educator").

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_power_unit [2] http://www.b737.org.uk/apu.htm

designtofly··on Why I left math
I don't think this has anything to do with unions. Georgia has a similar website (and Georgia is mostly anti-union). I think it has more to do with being a check-and-balance when dealing with people who are being paid with public money. You often hear about those scandals where public employees gave themselves and their friends huge salaries and bonuses; I think these websites are there to expose those types of fraud. It's no different than top executives at public (public as in stock listed, rather than gov't owned) having to disclose their compensation packages. People in a position of power have a tendency to abuse that power. There needs to be transparency in these cases.
designtofly··on Ask HN: Are there any good university-affiliated incubators?
Georgia Tech's: Technology Incubator (ATDC): http://atdc.org/

Venture Lab: http://innovate.gatech.edu/venturelab

More generally, both of these entities fall under the Enterprise Innovation Institute: http://innovate.gatech.edu/

designtofly··on Will the US handing over to ICANN be only positive?
A discussion on one possible outcome: the fight over trademarked domains:

U.S. Loosens Grip On ICANN, Domain Chaos To Follow? http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/172901/us_loos...

designtofly··on Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on coding
This is a good article that describes the company (SAS) and their culture:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/sanity.html

designtofly··on Poll: How high are your cubicle walls?
Where's the "5 feet tall - not quiet/private enough to get work done" option?
designtofly··on Why Can’t She Walk to School?
Your point does not change the numbers in question. "About 115 children are kidnapped by strangers." A non-custodial parent would not be a stranger.
designtofly··on Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs?
"Stopped after first paragraph."

Too bad.

"The kind of people who have jobs at Bell Labs and the 6.7m unemployed are probably pretty disjoint."

The point of the article was that small subset of people who have jobs at research labs create a disproportionate amount of jobs and wealth. The author was not implying that basic research jobs could generate millions of jobs on their own. However, the results of the basic research eventually result in the creation of millions of jobs (e.g. invention of transistor leading to an explosion of jobs in the computer industry. etc.). The article's point is that the only way we are going to be able to generate enough high paying jobs to sustain our standard of living and position in the world is through the investment into basic research.

designtofly··on Traffic Hacks: How One Driver Can Vastly Improve Traffic
This was the focus of a short video a group of college students made a few years ago, "A Meditation On the Speed Limit."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5366552067462745475

designtofly··on How To Publish a Scientific Comment in 123 Easy Steps
For those of you who dislike Scribd as much as I do, here's a direct link to author's website and pdf:

http://www.physics.gatech.edu/frog/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20...

designtofly··on [dead]
This was already submitted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=778694

Please don't modify the submitted URL to bypass the duplicate checker.

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