Hacker News Reader

felipeon Meter hackers find free parking in San Francisco

For a moment I thought the title said "available parking" instead of "free parking". Now that would be a great hack!

felipeon Share HN: I wrote an app to help my paralyzed cousin type significantly faster.

I think you should treat it like a business. Profit will maximize the impact of your change, and allow you to sustainably provide this solution to many more people than you would otherwise.

Google "Social Entrepreneurship" for more details.

felipeon There are 100 million electric bikes in China

> "The Chinese have a hundred million people on electric bikes," says Jamerson. "That means a hundred million potential customers" for electric cars.

That's the kind of absurd and ill-informed thinking that brought GM to bankruptcy (and yes, this guy is a former GM employee). I moved to China a month ago, and I was astonished to see the number of e-bikes here. There are a lot of cars too, but they are clearly not practical. While US is designed for cars (highways, suburbia life, big stores with parking, etc...) in China owning a car seems extremely inconvenient: No places to park, horrendous traffic jams, stress, narrow streets, not even mentioning the cost of the car itself and maintenance.

In the city I live (Shenyang) a bus ride is 1 yuan (US$0.14). A taxi ride is between 8 to 20 yuan (US$3). Plenty of streets have bike lanes and every store has free bike / e-bike parking. The ROI in owning a car must be ridiculous, and it is very inconvenient.

To believe that every e-bike owner one day will be a electric car owner is totally naive IMO.

felipeon Today Was The Last Day of Sun Microsystems

BEA has its own JVM as well, and guess who bought BEA?

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jrockit/index.html

By the way, I think JRockIt is the best JVM out there for server-side deployments. I've used both JRockIt and Sun's JVM on EC2, and JRockIt has much better memory management.

felipeon Google Loses Engineering Director Who Once Caused Steve Ballmer To Melt Down

I don't want to minimize their achievements, but it never takes one or two people to build something that large. There is an entire organization to support their efforts -- sales, customer support, QA, etc... There is a tendency to "hero"-ize developers in big companies, but at the end of the day it is an organization-wide effort.

felipeon Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip?

I recall one passage in the book "What the Dormouse Said" mentioned in the article about a company (I'm not sure but I think it was Ampex, by 101 towards San Jose) where a high-level executive actually asked his product managers to take LSD to get new product ideas.

felipeon Ask HN: How old were you when you got your first computer?

RIGHT! The place at the Nacional building (old downtown) was Paulisoft. Man, you could smell the scent of those 5 1/4" Nashua floppies as soon as you get out of the elevator!

ME TOO, My friends and I would carefully select the games over the week and then we couldn't wait until Saturday to get them. In fact, one day we almost got pickpocketed in the subway, and our concern was not our money or wallet, but protecting our floppies!! pretty hilarious now that I think about it...

At some point they published a book to hack the games so you'd get infinite lives. My friends and I figured out the assembly hex code for "minus one" (i. e.: one less life) and soon we were able to hack a bunch of games by looking for that byte alone throughout the memory.

Also we would hang-out at DDX. I lived my entire life in Vila Mariana (a Sao Paulo neighborhood), and we would just hang-out there with the guy who designed the mega-ram and the msx2 clone boards. The guy was doing pretty hardcore stuff, pure hacking... He would be considered a hero here in the US, but unfortunately in Brazil we don't recognize such talent...

There are still various MSX fan-clubs alive all over the world, and there are quite a few open source emulators. You can get all those games, and even MSX2 games too.

felipeon Ask HN: How old were you when you got your first computer?

Wow, I'm surprised!! I am Brazilian too, though my very first computer was a TK-85 (aka Sinclair ZX81), when I was 13... At the time Brazil was under a "market block-out" that blocked all imported computers, so we were forced to use the crappy Brazilian knock-offs!

A few years later I got an Expert (MSX) and in fact I ended up writing the first anti-virus for MSX computers (Viru-Boot, not sure if you ever seen it, it was featured in the magazines at the time)

Are you from Sao Paulo? In Sao Paulo the default hang-out was either Paulisoft or Disprosoft, the best places to get pirate software.

The good-old-days!!

felipeon Nobel Laureate Develops Low-Cost Health Care System for Bangladesh (cost is $2/year)

Exactly. Actually the site nextbillion.net did a case study a few years ago about this subject. I cannot find the exact link right now, but I am sure it's somewhere in the site :)

felipeon Nobel Laureate Develops Low-Cost Health Care System for Bangladesh (cost is $2/year)

It is worth mentioning that Muhammad Yunus is not only a microcredit pioneer but also co-created Grameen Phone, the very first mass cell phone provider in Bangladesh. They implemented a very innovative business model to make cell phones accessible to the poor, by allowing the cell phone owner (a villager) to resell minutes to other people in that same village.

What is interesting (and relevant for HN) is that the Grameen Phone experience demonstrates how access to technology empowers people exponentially:

1) The cell phone owner (villager) has a new source of income

2) The other villagers also increase their income, because now with access to crop information and market info, they can run their crops with less waste and negotiate a better price

3) Women is empowered because most of the phone owners are women (who are disenfranchised in that society)

felipeon Chicago 28-year-old made $70 million off cash loans, now he's buying slums

These "poor people" can't get regular bank accounts so they have no way to cash paychecks

They don't go to a payday loan to cash a check. They go there to get a LOAN. It's a cash-advance so they can pay some bill out of desperation, like their rent or something like that.

Wal-mart cashes a check for $3.

felipeon How a month and a half on Paxil taught me to love being shy.

It's sad that our society values and rewards extroverts so much, that introverts like the author feel the need to alter their minds in order to fit in.

The very existence of the tweeters and facebooks tell something about that need to reward extroverts.

felipeon Most time management is rubbish

> My biggest gripe with traditional time management method is that you lose sight of the big picture and only concentrate on the small urgencies.

The Stephen Covey's method ("7 habits" fame) specifically deals with this issue. I highly recommend you to read the book "First Things First", but basically it's about scheduling the big stuff first (literally blocking chunks of time in the calendar), and only deal with the today/soon/whenever tasks on the remaining time. It's not as simple as that, you need to read the book to actually apply it effectively, but I can tell you that I've been following it at least for the past 5 years and it has been extremely effective for me.

felipeon Ask HN: how do you process payments?

We are using Authorize.net's recurring billing service, and we are very happy with it. Mostly because we don't need to worry about the security issues you mentioned (encrypting, secondary processing server, etc...). Authorize.net stores the c/c info and takes care of it.

Paypal also does that, but we chose Authorize.net mainly because Paypal is not completely behind-the-scenes in the process (I don't remember exactly, but I think PayPal forces you to redirect the user to a PayPal page). Also, Authorize.net is cheaper in the long-run.

The downside of Authorize.net is the account set-up, which is a bit cumbersome. A provider will contact you and you need to describe them how you are going to use the account, etc... Also, I think you need to open a merchant account. It's not painful per se, but you should expect at least a week to get the whole thing up-and-running.

On the upside, Authorize.net gives you access to their test environment in the meantime, so you can do the integration while you wait for your account...

felipeon How Amazon's EC2 Service Was Born

Three small things that demonstrates how Bezos is an unique leader:

1) "we presented the paper to bezos" -- Wow, engineers have direct access to the CEO.

2) "we presented the paper to bezos (he doesn't do slides)" -- Wow, a CEO that actually has some attention span

3) "we presented the paper to bezos (he doesn't do slides), he liked a lot of it" -- Wow, a CEO who actually understands technology

felipeon Why Google Employees Quit

I think you are talking about BSO-Origin. I worked there for 4 years, and they called divisions "cells" for that reason. I think it worked wonderfully for IT services, and I wonder why other companies didn't adopt that model as well.

BSO-Origin also had something called "Environmental Accounting", where the environmental impact of each project was estimated, and a certain amount was re-invested in environmental projects.

The founder (Eckart Wintzen) was a true visionnaire, and unfortunately he passed away recently. Here is a great article about him, back from the 90s:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.11/es_wintzen_pr.html

felipeon Volunteer by filming election fraud problems and posting on YouTube

NO. I am a non-citizen volunteering to prevent fraud. You are the one here who brought this up without any real facts (besides that hit-job "research" you linked to).

felipeon Volunteer by filming election fraud problems and posting on YouTube

Oh pleeeeeeease, the Heritage Foundation???? What a surprise, blaming Latinos ("non-citizens") for everything.

felipeon Second-world child - Need Advice

I am Brazilian, so I certainly empathize with your post. If I was you, I would actually try a different route: Why not teach him how to fix / troubleshoot computers first?

1) It does not require English proficiency nor a diploma

2) It's more fun for kids because it deals with hardware, parts, quick software troubleshooting (instant reward)

3) He can make money immediately by providing services to locals (the internet cafe, the local bakery, etc...)

4) It's a gateway job for customer support or even programming

You could be the sales guy for the local "IT kid", and help him to score his first "contracts" with local small businesses. Then you can coach him in simple troubleshooting, etc...

felipeon Nokia Aeon: The IPhone Nano You've Always Wanted

Exactly! "Real Artists Ship"

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship...

felipeon The United States is now, in some very general sense, bankrupt

Actually our debt amounts to $53t (including future obligations).

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/07/americas-53-trillion-d...

felipeon The United States is now, in some very general sense, bankrupt

> We as a country have not defaulted on our debts and based on the strength of the treasury market few are betting on that scenario.

I haven't read the article yet, but I just want to make one comment about this quote. Although technically speaking we have not defaulted, we are inflating our currency through the roof, which is virtually a default -- In other words, our creditors will not be able to buy the same amount of stuff with the dollars we are going to repay them. And we are only able to do that because the dollar is a reserve currency.

For example, Argentina defaulted because they didn't have enough dollars to repay their debt. The difference in our case is that we own the dollar's printing press.

felipeon Washington Is Quietly Repudiating Its Debts

I don't know about the $25t figure, but the unfunded obligations (i. e.: debt + Social Security + Medicare + etc...) amount to $59t

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

felipeon Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

A few years ago I attended a talk by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, professor at Columbia University who was commissioned by the UN to develop a program to end worldwide poverty with sustainable, long-term initiatives -- Note this is not the standard aid, but stuff like microcredit and micro-entrepreneurship.

He traveled the world and came back with the price tag: $1 trillion. That is not to relief, but to END poverty worldwide.

felipeon 10,000 Mechanical Turkers work separately to draw a 100 dollar bill.

With a single print ($100) they recovered the costs of the entire labor ($100, or 10,000 cents). This is a great metaphor of our modern production chain, isn't it? (i. e.: How production exploits cheap labor)

felipeon 700 Billion bailout? Ebay it

Although a good idea, I am convinced this will NOT happen, because the last thing Paulson wants is transparency in the process. .

If this act passes, Paulson will have the authority to artificially assign arbitrary value to papers that the marketplace already valued at zero. His plan is to pay top-dollar for worthless paper, with money borrowed from you, me, everyone else and the next generation. -- That's why he does not want transparency.

felipeon Fed takes over AIG

China. As a matter of fact, I am learning Mandarin right now and I am planning to move from Silicon Valley to somewhere in China in a few years.

The book "Silicon Dragon" is a fascinating read.

felipeon Feds to take over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

Right! If our economy relies so much on housing to the point that it is a threat to the entire economy, then it shows that we didn't have a solid economy in the first place.

We are seriously compromising the well-being of future generations of this country in order to bail-out over-consuming house-owners and fat-cats in Wall Street. Absolutely outrageous.

felipeon Farming Innovations in a Slum

I don't have data, but from my own experience (I am Brazilian, living in the US for 7 yrs) I can tell you that recycling is not very common simply because people reuse a lot of stuff rather than recycling. The concept of reuse is ingrained in the culture due to lack of money, and not only the poor, but the middle-class do it a lot too. Some examples:

* Product plastic containers are washed and reused to store food, instead of throwing them away. Plastic containers are made sturdier (sometimes even made out of glass and with nice designs) because the companies know people will reuse them, so companies see it as a kind of free product advertisement.

* Soft drinks and beer are commonly sold in big glass bottles, which are then taken back to the distributor, washed, and then reused (not recycled, but reused).

* Electronics: Because labor is cheap and goods are expensive, people fix equipments instead of throwing them away. Parts are reused to the max, and there is an entire after-market ecosystem for them.

Last time I visited my family, it struck me how smaller my mom's trash can in Brazil is compared to my trash can here in the US. It may sound like a dumb comparison, but illustrates my point that we generate way more trash over here (and I am actually pretty conscious about reusing stuff).

felipeon Ask HN: Best way to send MMS

> Basically, the impression I'm getting is that most carriers do not want 'small fish' like us to send MMS messages on their network without approval.

EXACTLY!

The way we circumvented the system a few years ago (2006) was to get a plain unlimited SMS plan, and then programatically send and receive SMSs through a real phone connected to the server via USB (not sure about MMS, but it is probably similar). This is very slow (12 seconds per message), and most carriers tell you "unlimited" but there is an actual limit in the fine-print.

I would recommend this solution only so you can bootstrap it. If you really take off, the carrier will block you immediately, so a business model that can sustain the MMS costs is a must (as swombat pointed out).

Feel free to email me if you need more info on this SMS hack.