patrickyeon

> Recently, basically every major company other than Apple has found that product organization yields better results, because each individual product can better respond to competitive threats in their market.

Do you have a source for that? Not because I'm challenging you, but because I'd like to read more on it.

There's a bit at the end of Chuck Yeager's autobiography, where he takes to task the idea of test pilots being men who have "the right stuff" (specifically addressing the book by that title).

"And in the end, the one big reason why I was better than average as a pilot was because I flew more than anybody else. If there is such a thing as 'the right stuff' in piloting, then it is experience."

Launch video, including onboard footage of stage seperations and satellite deploys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMCw-jMQlo

I share the cynicism I infer in your comment; I don't think that this demo really gives any weight to the idea that this will be an actual, practical, product. However, the commenter asked for a video and there it is.

I went digging for videos on Twitter (as that's where the article says they're floating around).

https://twitter.com/spencerrascoff/status/827344599362383872 and https://twitter.com/broukhim/status/827430306101669888

There's a nugget of a great idea here, the realization that there has to be a better way to describe schematics than drawing them. Unfortunately, most comments seem to be distracted by the trees of what is started here and are missing the forest that is the potential. (Aside: ever stuck on a problem or need to prompt someone else to start talking through a problem, especially in an interview? Ask "what's the worst solution that could be argued to work here? How do we improve it?")

So, what would a more exciting example include? How about sensible "default initializers" so that I don't have to wire up all the power pins, decoupling caps, pull-ups, pull-downs, and no-connects that 98% of the designs for a particular chip need?

What if instead of having to draw this: http://e2e.ti.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions... I could just enter:

  cpu = msp430(vcc=3v3)
  storage = sdcard(vcc=3v3)
  sd_bus = storage.connect(cpu, I2C_FAST) # let cpu and storage negotiate their pins
  # sd_bus is now a list of nets that make up the connection
  utils.apply_pull_ups(sd_bus, 50K)

That's all very possible, computationally, but so much less tedious than drawing it out and so much more descriptive of what I'm actually trying to achieve. As a bonus, it has properties programmers forget so many other people's tools don't: it's good for line-based diff, search/replace, and source control.

Another example: Most of what's going on here: http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/162013/freqgen.png is defaults (it's also, and I wish I could say this nicely, in my opinion a very poorly drawn schematic). Instead:

  loop_filter = utils.third_order_bandpass(freq_min, freq_max, RC_ONLY)
  freqgen = adf4350(vcc=3v3, cp_filter=loop_filter) # boom, all sensible defaults
  for pin, color in zip(freqgen[LD, CE, LE], ('green', 'red', 'yellow')):
      pin.net.connect(status_led(color=color, brightness=30mcd))
      # let the computer work out your resistor value
  freqgen[RFOUT_A].connect(BNC(50Ohm, SINGLE_ENDED))
  freqgen[RFOUT_B].connect(BNC(50Ohm, SINGLE_ENDED))
  # let the computer work out that it terminates the complementary output

The linked project isn't nearly at this point, but I consider it in the same spirit. We have to go through the awkward solutions while we iterate towards a great one, I would say.

The most novel part of that article for me was all the way at the end:

> But what about the existing starter homes built after WWII, aren't they still affordable?

> Well, no. The big problem of a starter home is that it's only cheap when it is first built, because it is barebone. Once the owners start making the house theirs to accommodate the growing needs of the family, the house gets bigger and more luxurious. Every addition to the house results in higher market value because of increased desirability. So once the original owners are ready to move out, the house is no longer a starter home, but a big, well-furnished home from which the owner will expect to recover the costs of remodeling.

> That is the issue of the "starter home" or "grow home" idea. That home is only affordable once, for its first owners. So for every generation to get its "starter home", every generation has to build entirely new neighborhoods in greenfield areas, where land is cheap. When a metropolitan area matures, this ideal no longer works, the greenfield areas are just too far and are disconnected from the city. So, what can be done?

Not only is it expensive to buy a home, you can't even buy one cheap that somebody else got for cheap because they've (likely) made it more valuable by making it more liveable for themselves!

It is very editorialized. "Nature and other top journals refuse to consider papers with Open Access requirements" is just as truthful, but presents a different antagonist.

I hope you don't mind, but I'm interested in talking to you about satellite comms and antennas specifically. You don't have any contact info listed in your profile, but if you'd like to talk you can either hit my personal address listed in my profile, or my planet.com one where my username is patrick.

> If your posts don’t get traction, HackerNews allows a small number of reposts spaced out over time — you’re not spamming (so long as you’re not spamming).

Interesting to watch. This article has been posted by the same user twice already in the last week, with a different title, and got no traction either time. It's hard sometimes to figure out when what you're offering isn't wanted, and when you just hit the perfect storm that stopped you from getting the attention you deserve.

I'm not calling johnwheeler out on this, clearly he's eventually hit the right nerve. But, well, it's a line to walk: taking the hint that some content doesn't resonate with an audience vs. needing the effort to make them realize it should resonate.

I agree with you that this is an issue, and is why I buy hard copies of books I want to share or read many times over. When I'm buying an ebook, my thinking is "this will entertain/educate me and I would like to give money (that I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to spend) to the people who made it possible". If that weren't the case, I'd just use my library card.

A little off-topic, but I found this interesting:

> "Specifically, a lot of the traditional guys price e-books at $20–30, often times more than the paperback/hardcover, which is so stupid."

It catches my eye when people get stuck on an e-book version costing more than a hard copy. It's funny that a Kindle version can be more valuable (instant delivery, easier to carry around, and a more enjoyable reading experience) to somebody, but still seem like it should cost less. Personally, I'll gladly pay an extra dollar to get an e-book version for anything I'm only expecting to read once or twice.

I understood that notion to mean the companies would recognize a "great" developer when they were presented with one, either during the interview or even when said developer was working with them.

The author talks about using two different greens in the 5th paragraph. It creates a wider colour gamut.

I would think not. Is the interesting part of the problem drawing charts? If not, it makes perfect sense have that abstracted away somewhere else.

I'm not a part of this project, but if you look at your tile it's about 2/3 trees (by area), and the results are mostly tiles full of trees. Out of the results from your search, I picked out another tile [0] that I thought was more "swimming pool" with fewer "distractions". The results look like they're more in line with what you were hoping for. You could iterate this way a bit until you find the best prototype for a swimming pool.

0: http://nyc.terrapattern.com/?_ga=1.84865689.1830936426.14642...

(I'm not an orbits expert, but I do work for Planet Labs, and we're sending up piles of cubesats.)

The actors puting objects up in orbit are trying hard to be good neighbours these days. Our cubesat missions are designed such that should we completely lose control over a satellite the orbit will naturally degrade and re-enter the atmosphere on a ~10 year time scale. Our hardware deployed from the ISS is gone in less than two years. It's my understanding that it is required of us (and most groups in general) to plan our missions such that they will naturally de-orbit within 25 years.

Very true, I see >56,000 English-language books that seem to be available for free ( http://link.springer.com/search?facet-content-type=%22Book%2... ).

I went and chatted with some people at Mission Motors ~18 months ago. They had recently split off Mission Motorcycles to do the motorcycle thing independently. Mission Motors seemed mostly focussed on electrifying construction and farm equipment by then.

They are trying self-regulation, right now, and the article is arguing that it's not working well enough. They've been self-regulating as long as we've had trucks.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but Google has an interest in maximizing the number of people who have consistent, reliable, enjoyable internet experiences. If this hardware does not collect data to help them target ads (and that may very well be the case), but causes more eyeballs to spend more time online where they will find Google-hosted ads, it helps their core business AND the customer.

The cctv-america link talks about a blast equivalent to 21 tons of TNT at this event, and your link has 2.9 kilotons in Halifax. So Halifax was ~150x this one.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect the (not very extensively tested) launch abort system wouldn't have actually been installed of this flight.

Looks interesting. It sounds like it will attack a lot of the first things I did actual (non-homework, non-toy) programing for, which are also things I've tried (unsuccessfully) to convince others to learn just a bit of programming to be able to do. I hope this book accomplishes that.

I work for Planet Labs, and our satellites are 5kg[1] each, providing 3-5m ground-resolution imaging. You can do a lot with relatively little mass these days.

1: http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm

Very cool. For people running the numbers about launch costs, there's a lot more to it than just $/kg. There are very big constants in the cost of a launch (even though SpaceX can get 13150kg/61M$, I doubt they'll offer 1315kg/6.1M$), and having final say in launch timing and what orbit you get is worth a fair bit. For now, it's relatively cheap to hitch a ride as a secondary to the ISS (or ISS orbit), but 500km sun-synchronous is not nearly as easy to line up.

Comparable prices for small sats: Nanoracks quotes 60,000$/1U (usually ~1kg) to the ISS. Interorbital quotes 12,500$/kg at a 310km orbit (or 8,000$ to use their 0.75kg tubesat).

Hi, I work for Planet Labs. There was definitely no retrieving those Doves once they were deployed, even had we wanted to. The good news is that we've put a lot of effort into automating our systems, so those satellites actually pinged us shortly after their deploy and were all ready for commissioning! They're currently a few hundred kilometres up and taking photos for us.

Hi, I see you're a new user here and I hope you come back to check on this and it's not just a throwaway account.

You saw the flaw in the system and studied so that you could exploit it improve your own situation. Some people may be mad about that, but I'm honestly not. I'm sad that you put effort into practicing interviewing and sound like you're not putting effort into practicing your actual job. You say "I'm a shitty dev", which is a fixed mindset type of thing to say. You identify yourself as your current capabilities, as opposed to a growth mindset where you may say "I'm working on improving my dev skills".

It sounds like touchy-feely pop-psych, but think about it: you saw that getting better at interviews would land you better jobs, so you worked on interview skills, and you got better jobs. Now if you took your current job (and your next one) as a chance to work on your dev skills, maybe you won't get fired after 6 months. Maybe you'll grow in to absolutely deserving the awesome job, and then grow beyond that.

Please think about it. Paraphrasing an Adventure Time character, being a shitty dev is the first step to being a kind of good dev. And we need more good devs and fewer firings.

I honestly don't even know how to begin to explain this to you.

There are highly valuable pieces of land (as happens with nice waterfronts) that developers have promised to make accessible to everyone in exchange for being able to develop there. They then make those places as unappealing as they can to the public by using misleading architectural cues, being less tahn helpful in enabling the access they promised, or even having guards flat-out lie about the public's access to a space. If this does not seem like a bad thing to you, and I mean this with no malice, I don't believe there is enough common ground between you and I for me to be able to explain why it is.

If you think this is just a London thing, it's happening in San Francisco (which, yes, has similar issues with inequality) [1] and is an ongoing issue along the entire coast of California where the beach is public up to (at least) the high tide mark, and often with trails to get to it too. But landowners there also put up fake signs, block off access paths, and hire security guards to lie about whether the general public is allowed there or not.

[1] http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known-publ...

I don't have the stories handy, but there are records of military units getting emotionally attached to their bomb disposal robots. For example, some units have held funerals for the robots that are rendered non-operational, and some soldiers have even gone to the extreme of risking their own life to "rescue" "injured" service robots. It shouldn't need to be said, but this is the exact opposite of what the robots should be doing (reducing risk to their operators).

Kick the damn things all you want. Normalize it so that nobody does something stupid trying to protect a machine.