prbuckley

I worked at LLNL 2001-2005 as a mechanical engineering. It was a very nice place to work. I had to go through the clearance process and that was the weirdest part. They sent people to interview a camp councelor I had when I was 10 years old! I also had to list every address I had lived at and every country I had ever visited with cooresponding dates.

Given the huge amount of personal data the government now has on me it was quite concerning when the OPM had 21.5 million government employees information hacked, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/07/0...

The vertical take off landing makes for a much larger operating enevelope for a vehicle. The challenge is how to efficiently hover with out burning to much energy.

Larger rotors can out perform jets for efficinecy, ie rotors move a large volume of air at a slower velocity which is fundamentally more efficient then moving a small volume of air at a high velocity. You can also squeeze some more efficiency out of the system if you put a duct around the rotors, a duct can in itself produce ~40% of the total lift.

The Hiller flying platform which was built and test flown in the 1960's is a good model for something that could fly for 30-60 minutes with todays technology. You can search Youtube to find videos of its test flights...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgNlumaVPDw

I really want to know where the author moved next. It doesn't mention it specifically in the article.

I was thinking the same thing, quora has a list of highest ROI films of all times. Most are low budget break away global success's.

https://www.quora.com/Which-movies-have-the-highest-Return-o...

Can I request a Shopify platform integration? My company (www.dodocase.com) would love to sell our products in mobile apps. Feel free to reach out to me at patrick at dodocase dot com.

Here is an article that has a bunch of photos of specific towns for sale, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576711/Buy-ghost-vi...

This article makes some fair points but the authors opinion is tainted by recency bias. A new technology doesn't need to be as good or better then recent technology it just needs to be different and unique in some way. Gamers and gaming has a really high bar of expectations. I agree that generation 1 of consumer VR won't meet existing AAA game title experiance but it doesnt have to garner mass market appeal. This is like expecting the first mobile phones to be as polished as the iPhone, or early versions of online video to be as good as highdef tvs for mass market appeal. Clearly that wasnt the case, people found value in these early versions of technology even though they were not as good as alternative options because they added some additional element that was unique. For mobile phones if was mobility, for online video it was easy sharing and watch on demand. What will be the key value consumers derive from VR? That remains to be answered but there is something unique and different enough about VR that makes it promising.

More like Aqua-hired!

Government agencies have a tendancy to be incentivized to pick on small guys who are easier/simpler to harass. The beurocrat gets the same amount of credit for closing a small case as closing a lrage complicated case. For example this article cites the forest service reviewing water permits for a couple of small cabins and requiring them to install tanks at a substantial cost instead of going after Nestle who is pumping 10's of millions of gallons a year.

It must have taken a tremendous amount of work to get the payment gateways to work this way. How did you guys do it?

I was in the YC 08 batch with the machine zone guys, great guys. It is worth noting that they didn't really start as a gaming company when YC invested in them. They built a social network app called "add her" that was designed to get people more followers. They pivoted into mobile gaming after YC and had huge success.

I am a bit partial as I am one of the founders of this company but here is a shameless plug for our vr viewers... http://www.dodocase.com/collections/virtual-reality

I think LightField camera technology is ultimatly going to win the VR camera wars, it provides much better depth information. If you havn't seen the otoy tech yet it is worth checking out...

http://home.otoy.com/otoy-demonstrates-first-ever-light-fiel...

There are a couple of consumer ready 360 camera options available to purchase today ($300-$400), albeit not 3d steroscopic. I have personally played with the ricoh theta and the kodak pixpro and think they are good products. Here are some links if you want to check them out, I don't work for any of these companies but am a VR enthusiast...

Good for stills and video https://theta360.com/en/about/theta/

Action camera similar to GoPro http://kodakpixpro.com/Americas/cameras/activeCam/sp360.php

http://www.vsnmobil.com/products/v360

That is a very standup move.

This is pretty rad Zach.

How much thrust would you need to move a person up hill on skis? I wonder if a paragliding motor might work?

Eye of the tiger played using floppy disk drives, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMcRd_4RwRQ

Can you give more details on how distributions are tied to founder salary? If salary is above X distributions to indie.vc need to be Y.

There is a great documentary on Netflix entitled "money for nothing" that does a good job connecting the Feds policies over the past decade, including QE to asset inflation, which is the rise of stocks and real estate but not general consumer goods. Japan's economy went through a cycle of asset inflation and it can be very dangerous.

What kind of products do you make? What margin do you need to support local manufacturing? What is your main distribution?

Here is a link to the 24 minute documentary about the Harvard Depository...

http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/

Very cool how they use the depository floor plan as a way to navigate the film.

C) SpaceX also has considerable risk of failure so you have to factor this into a valuation and investment. Whatsapp has eliminated much of this risk and is already a developed and implemented product.

I am not saying Whatsapp has anywhere near the potential value of SpaceX but it is important to factor the amount of risk given the stage a project is at.

My friend Altay started a software developer agency. Altay is a great guy and YC alum. You might want to check it out, http://www.10xmanagement.com/

As an aside I think a vehicle like this could be developed today and fall under the FAA ultralight powered vehicle classification (weighing less then 254 pounds and carrying less then 5 gallons of fuel). This classification doesn't require you to have a pilots license!

People here might also be interested in the Mosquito Air helicopter as well. It falls into this ultralight classification and is a kit you can build in 200-300 hours. It costs about $30,000...

http://www.innovator.mosquito.net.nz/mbbs2/mosquito.asp

Depending on what you mean by scaling up. There have been single man vertical take off and landing (VTOL) vehicles that have two rotors and require no variable pitch for directional control so they are even simpler then the system in this video since the 1950's! The first such vehicle was the Hiller VZ-1, dubbed the "Flying Platform". If you are in the bay area you can go check a real one out at the Hiller Aviation museum next to the san carlos airbort (30 minutes south of sf). Or enjoy watching this video...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/the-se...

Directional control is achieved by leaning, the gyroscopic forces from the dual rotating blades creates inherent stability without any feedback system. They are like segways of the sky. Reports say it only took 20 minutes for a non pilot to learn how to fly it. These machines are incrdible and I don't understand why more hasn't been done with them.

A late 1970's version called the williams x jet WASP added a cruise missle turbojet for more horsepower, and was coined the "flying pulpit".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-3Ql7G7qRc

I don't think scaling this up is a question of inertia it is more a question of weither a material exists that can be used in those flexural joints with much higher loads.

This is a material science question. A material may exist that has the right combination of flex, strength and lets also not forget durability. I am a mechanical engineer and crack propagation and cycle fatigue would be a major concern for a joint like that at large loads. There are all kinds of amazing tricks material scientists know how to play to combat these types of problem.

I think this could be scaled up if material to make those flexure joints exist.

Could this be financial espionage? I would imagine that the Norwegian politicians have privileged information about oil production volume in the country that some traders out there could benefit from knowing. This is all just a theory. I don't think governments are the only suspects in this type of spying.

If this area is of interest you should also check outhttps://karmiclabs.com. I have no relationship with the company but the founders are friends and think they are doing some really interesting things in the payment and debit card space.

Smartphones and the internet are an intriguing platform for Virtual Reality to be built on. This looks like a really interesting robotics hobbiest project that will push the boundries of what we thought could be done with a smartphone and VR.