entangledqubit

As a paying Dark Sky user on Android, this is very disappointing. I'm extra disappointed since I was under the illusion that Dark Sky was more of a public service entity than a take-the-money-and-run startup. I'll do better due diligence before buying in the future.

I'll be filing this story under the general theme: rich company distorts genuine social impact rewards and ends up making people poorer in aggregate. Sadly this just seems normal these days...

I do agree that it is tough to figure out what the right thing is but I disagree with the survival argument. A lot of organizations (e.g. companies, non-profits, and unions) end up spending a good chunk of their resources to try keep things as they are and keep the organization alive - despite the right thing being in another direction. This ends up keeping these organizations alive for far longer than they should. The systems of incentives can also become perverted by these organizations.

Personally, I want to see more organizations devoted to solving problems and boldly becoming obsolete. The predominant reward models do not really seem to reward that.

(Recent semi-related anecdote: see recent nytimes article about what happened to the project devoted towards designing and stockpiling inexpensive ventilators that came into existence after doing a risk analysis around SARS.)

As a regular backpacker, I've been pretty happy using my phone as a primary source and paper maps as backup. On my phone, if you use the right settings (aggressive battery saver, airplane mode), turning GPS on only when checking location, and turning it off at night, I can get a solid week of battery life. (A backup battery pack does not weigh much.) Clearly, I'm not using it for much else than reading a bit before bed and taking many pictures.

If you go this route, practice using whatever app you're using in off-line mode to verify your map cache data!!!

That being said, definitely practice with paper maps and maintaining a sense of direction. This sounds easy but in an emergency situation this can be a weak link. Nothing sucks more than hiking down the wrong trail for a couple hours when you're racing against sunset. I've also been in many canyons and valleys with screwy GPS and heading readings so it's good to be able to recognize when that tool is going awry.

As far as apps, I mainly use the original Backcountry Navigator. Not the prettiest but it's been solid for me and the author was responsive back in the day when I messaged them.

I would imagine that managing such a pool of dated and highly heterogeneous hardware would incur a lot of overhead. The procurement effort may end up being rather high as well.

When I was at Google most recently, I saw quite a few transfers to Waymo that initially struck me as odd matches. Aside from the pseudo-retention (aka denial of talent) aspect, there's also a lot of non-car related work (e.g. apps, demand prediction) that needs to be done for Waymo to progress.

>... you find out that the CEO sold the company at a bargain so liquidation preference kicked in and he just took a huge retention bonus instead.

There's something potentially misaligned between the control of the founders and the final grant value on the other end. There are so many ways to distort this in the final exit deal and these are details that you probably won't learn about unless you happened to exercise stock before the exit happens. In general, the positive outcomes seem "capped" in that a founder is inclined to lock in their gains with an exit if the deal is reasonable for them.

Maybe the option shouldn't be as a share of the company but a share of everything the CEO/founder makes from there on out. :)

For really early stage, I generally assume that a founder is trying to at least 10x their net worth so any hand wavy exit estimate generally gets capped with that in mind.

You can't make money this way but you can still argue that money that would have gone to taxes has now been redirected by an individual to a cause they solely decided is worthwhile.

Possibly longer than that. I've been disappointed by lack of consumer product since 1993.

https://comotion.uw.edu/startups/microvision/

I think the first end users were supposed to be fighter pilots.

Anyone else later transition to the heavily moddable 4X Space Empire IV?

With pixels sized at about a millimeter, maybe it should be called a "milliLED" display.

I guess I read it more as valuations get bloated which makes the returns more difficult but not that business profits themselves are "harder" to get in an effort per unit sense.

Which part did you read as claiming "business is harder"?

Does anyone know whether eye safety is de facto maintained when your eye is being continuously bombarded by the 100+ scanning lasers being emitted from each of the 100 cars in the vicinity of an intersection? I'm on board with the case with a handful of lasers scanning by quickly but the energy may really start to add up in certain plausible future scenarios.

Hey Lacker. I'd be curious about whether there is a bias around the seniority level/situation in the pool of people you keep in touch with. People I've talked to, ranging from new hires to old timers, have generally trended toward being more discontent and cynical about the company as a whole.

While I am curious about their search tech, it would be nice if they posted a blog post about their business model so we can understand their incentives up front.

While I'm wishing, it would be nice to hear about how they anonymize their logs. Their privacy notice only really mentions scrubbing associated IP addresses - which may not be sufficient.

Has anyone seen any plausible estimates of the additional fire danger arising from the use of all the small generators that are firing up during these periods?

I'm curious if all this represents a greater risk than powering up the lines. (But at least PG&E won't foot the bill...)

They weren't. The crop dusting was done under manual control. Around 2005, you could semi-easily get a flight control unit to put on the research version.

Add a laser scanning system and direct the system to fly into a building... from flights back around 2006-ish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skdh4Nwm6r4

I've been delving into bash scripting a bit more than I'd like as of late and the lack of universally available consistent structured output for the CLI really got to me. Most of the script contents end up being these obfuscating and brittle "hacky solutions" that never should have been necessary. When I thought about pursuing fixing this I felt like the task was a bit overwhelming. I'm delighted that these developers are working on this!

You're not remembering incorrectly. If you compare old job reports to more recent ones, they now talk a lot more about the "labor force participation rate". Basically, the unemployment rate is distorted by the character of the job loss in the Great Recession so you can't really decide on a full recovery from looking at that one number.

Wirecutter claims that the Evo Select line is an Amazon exclusive rebranding of the Evo Plus line and that this should reduce concern about getting a fake - for that line at least. https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-microsd-card/

People mentioning their experiences here should definitely mention what form they're taking. Magnesium oxide is pretty commonly sold but it doesn't get absorbed very well - to the point where I think it should not be sold at all. I've had good experience with chelated magnesium.

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be washing up with soap in mountain lakes. Biodegradable doesn't mean it can't harm something before degrading. I find a rinse to be more than sufficient for most of my trail needs. If I need soap for some kind of washing I take some water out of the source and wash elsewhere.

While you're probably bound by some restricted shareholder agreement, you may get a lot of mileage by just asking a lawyer to ask some questions on your behalf. If this restructuring is going on in the context of some larger time sensitive deal, they may throw something your way to not screw up the timeline. Of course, this all depends on your tolerance for pain.

While I'm sure it would be quickly sued out of existence, are there sites specializing in this sort of information? I'd love to see names of founders/early investors/board members/... easily associated with these kinds of decisions (i.e. track records of the good and bad). I have to send feelers out into my network to dig up this kind of information but that's not an option for a lot of people new to the industry.

I've been to both sites. When I went to the VLA it was not during an open house. There's more to immediately appreciate at the VLA even if it's to drive up nearby and just look at it with a bit of awe.

The Trinity site was compelling from a historical standpoint but it's really just a patch of desert in a missile range. There was small tent set up with information in addition to the markers. Most of the time for the experience was waiting in a car on a road in the middle of nowhere and speculating about occasional bits of debris in the distance.

Both are worthwhile but I'd go for the VLA.

Odd. I don't see code for tracking the potential tax liability of all those "free" meals.

The sheer scale of machines running amok in this series is pretty fun. The source Manga is better than the movie.

A patent for a similar device from back in the 60s: http://www.google.com/patents/US3115194

Happened to see it while archiving the inventor's papers. :)