dominicr

Didymos has an orbit that only very occasionally brings it anywhere near Earth. Only within a few million kilometres every hundred years or so. The small amount of debris produced will continue along the slightly altered orbit, so won't be a hazard to local space traffic until such time as the larger asteroid comes close enough to hit Eartch, at which point the tiny debris is a lesser concern.

Car manufacturers are not really accurate metaphors as it is CBP and ICE themselves who are carrying out actions that many people strongly disagree with. Whereas a car company has no control over its customers

If Ford were separating children from their parents and imprisoning them in warehouses then I'm sure many people would stop buying Fords or doing business with them.

There have actually been campaigns against vehicle manufacturers because of who they sell to. I recall that JCB and Land Rover have had campaigns against them as they sell vehicles (mainly armoured) to the armies of countries with questionable human rights records.

Because a work environment and YouTube are very different places. Work decisions such as promotions, product choices, technical decisions, etc... shouldn't be largely driven by facebook likes.

I heard it as a criticism of deciding work decisions based on popularity, with product choices, technical implementations, etc... based on facebook likes, not real deciding factors. Which is very different from growing a YouTube audience.

Or imagine "Taleban drone strike kills 30 farmers in Oklahoma". There would be a reaction!

A single instance of MongoDB and node can handle quite a lot. Anyone who needs this service as a critical component of their product can cheaply host their own version of this or risk downtime/slowness that'd affect their bottom line. (Although for commercial uses you'd use something more featured and secure anyway.)

I' guessing this is sarcasm as most private transport infrastructure is already "free". Roads, bridges, traffic lights, street lights, some car parks, snow clearing, etc...

Even in the US, the majority of education provision is free or subsidised, and 19% of Americans have free or subsidised healthcare.

Social democracies believe that our large, common problems should have common solutions which benefit everyone and society as a whole. That's nothing to do with communism.

I'll clarify a little: I know basically nothing about the games industry, so my thinking was along the lines of...

Many years ago, when social media was just starting, maybe somebody thought "Wouldn't it be cool if we could share photos so that we knew what our friends were doing." At the time they might not have forseen all the negative outcomes, the social anxiety, addiction, body dysmorphia, bullying, etc... caused by our buggy psychological processes.

In a similar way I was wondering if the first developer that thought about adapting the normal random item drop in a game and instead making it a purchasable mystery box, actually realised that this fits the definition of gambling and the myriad legal and moral problems that introduced.

In the present day I'm sure there are plenty who know exactly what they're doing or are willfully ignoring the moral issues around loot boxes. But quite often how something is today doesn't fully explain how it started.

I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue. Either they understand the issue but it's their profits at stake, so they'll ignore the potential problems. Or have these stealth gambling mechanisms entered the games gradually and without the industry realising that what it's doing is actually gambling and there repercussions to that.

Yes, it does cause confusion and can cause people to create an architecture that is too fragmented, resulting in a higher than necessary overhead in support for all those tiny services. I suspect a lot of people who don't like microservices are suffering from this problem.

Some people's definitions of microservices are that they are separated business domain, with each development team focusing on their business processes. Therefore they can reflect reflect Conway's law. Those teams develop autonomous services which communicate with the services of other teams (e.g. the invoicing team build services to interact with the sales team).

In smaller companies a single team, or indeed each team in a larger company, can have multiple microservices, but there are some qualities that would be needed to truly fit the microservice definitions.

If you haven't read Martin Fowler's article on Microservices then it's a good start: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html There's a side bar on that which asks "How big is a microservice?"

Of course Sam Newman is also a great resource for microservice principles: https://vimeo.com/131632250

HN is professional development ;)

That's probably good advice for anyone: don't stretch yourself financially, especially on depreciating assets.

I buy second hand cars with some visible damage for a similar reason. They tend to be cheaper and we're not that bothered about any scrape & dents our family adds.

Obviously you've got to check that the minor damage doesn't reflect more severe damage you can't see, but that's the same for any second hand car and a good inspection should reveal that.

Microservices aren't necessarily small, at least by definition if not name. They are discrete services modeled around a business domain which are independently deployable and scalable. As such a "microservices" can get pretty big in terms of code and functionality.

Also similar to "Where Children Sleep", which is exactly that: http://jamesmollison.com/books/where-children-sleep/

Animated gifs, grey backgrounds, tables for layout, frames & sub 100Kb page sizes. I remember those days fondly. A lot of web development was much easier back then but could also be very frustrating trying to get the simplest things to work.

Accessibility was my first thought. For as long as there's been the web there's been an ongoing struggle between visual improvements and accessibility. One thing we've learnt is that many developers don't take accessibility into consideration, so messing around with the simplest concept of HTML, text, seems like a negative in terms of accessibility.

While we're at it, can products stop using the phrase "aircraft grade aluminium" to sell trivial items such as forks, wallets and, I kid you not, Post-It note holders.

Yes, there are differences in quality possible with aluminium, as there are with most materials, but to make "aircraft grade" a main selling point for your sunglasses case is snake oil marketing nonsense.

I worked for a year in an incubator in Oslo, full of start ups that talked about “work hard, play hard” & having to put in extra effort. The building was practically empty by 6pm.

> for BMW and BENZ electrical line up to come close to Tesla in quality, range, reliability might take another decade

Whilst I admire Tesla's ambition, the work they've done to advance electric cars, plus they certainly make nice cars, a lot of people fail to see Tesla's fallibility and the potentially weak position they're actually in.

- BMW plans to have 25 models with some battery capabilities by 2023, at least 4 all electric. Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) are aiming for 10 all-electric models by then.

- On dollar for mile range basis most manufacturers are catching up with Tesla with their new models (or are premium Jaguars, where that's less of a factor). The Chevy Bolt is about equal to the (yet to be released) standard Model 3 in price and range.

- Consumer Reports in the US calls Tesla's reliability "weak" and does not recommend the Model 3.

- Legacy car manufacturers can scale up the bulk of the manufacturing process for an electric car quicker than Tesla, which is still struggling to run a production line that meets expectations.

I like Tesla but it is by no means the clear winner of the electric vehicle race.

I think the control of Singapore's cars is a reason why they can make a shift away from petrol/diesel cars, not against it. Electric vehicles primarily move pollution from the daily usage in dense urban areas, to remote production and recycling. For Singapore this is ideal as it means cleaner air. The local environment is very much a concern for Singapore.

The market effect on BMW, Mercedes, etc... is probably not much of a concern on them as most car manufacturers are introducing electric models, with BMW having a major share of the electric car market in some places. Tesla currently has a good market share in the prestige range but that is decreasing.

The oil & gas companies are also getting in on the act, so they're reducing the impact on the introduction of electric cars. The first charging station in Singapore is in Shell petrol station. They might prefer hydrogen fuel cell cars as it maintains the need for their distribution network, but they'll adapt either way.

As to maintenance, Tesla's quality issues mean there's no shortage of work. I used to live near a Tesla workshop and it was always overfull with cars needing expensive repairs.

We've been conditioned to believe that some evidence is infallible, such as technology based tracking and even DNA evidence. Whilst people might embellish, lie or simply have bad recall, we think technology is near perfect. The reality is that this can often be flawed or indicative, and not always a certain proof of guilt. A lot of this technology, or advances in it, is new and I imagine not everyone is keeping up with the full implications.

One effect of this in the Nordic culture is that often a lot of these holidays are taken at the same time. People take 3 or 4 weeks off at once between the end of June and early August, especially in Norway. Productivity for the company effectively hits zero for 6 weeks whilst the Norwegians have their holiday, then the Swedish and Danish have their turn.

Although the few people that do work get a lot done due to having no meetings or interruptions. There were days in the summer where there were 3 of us in the office, out of 200 in the department. Bliss!

Yep, this is people we're talking about! They'd be balancing 2 chairs on each other whilst randomly stabbing a paper clip in the direction of the bulb's screw, with the power on to be sure it worked! Product designers have to design for the stupidest of us.

"For some reason, GE decided not to install a physical reset button" Well, there might be some good reasons not to have a reset button. Without knowing GE's reasons let's brainstorm:

- My first thought is that many light bulbs are not easily accessible. They could be high up, or in a casing that requires a tool to open. So being able to reset them remotely is a practical benefit.

- If you google "accidents whilst changing light bulb" it seems that it's not impossible to injure or even kill yourself whilst changing a light bulb. So minimising the amount of times you need to physically access a light bulb has safety benefits.

- It is possible that the bulb is turned off but the power to it is still on. In that scenario getting a consumer to reach into a powered on light socket to press a button on the bulb, near the electrical connections, is not considered safe.

That's my 5 minutes worth of reasons. Any more?

The comment I was replying to was referring to the word's definition in economics, not the current legal standards of specific countries.

What you're referring to is a 'pure' monopoly, which are relatively rare (but still common enough).

The wider use of definition in economics is a company that dominates a market to the extent that is has control over the market. For example, when suppliers have little actual choice in dealing with the company.

Higher prices are not necessarily a product of a monopoly and are not needed to define one.

Somewhat related, my brother is a musician (playing what you might call experimental music) and says Japan is an amazing place to play as the audience pays close attention to what you're doing and remains quiet whilst you're playing. It seems the culture there is that it's music lovers going to these venues for the primary purpose of experiencing the music. Whereas in a lot of places I've been people are going to hang out with friends and the music is secondary.

I suppose because WSJ covers markets and there are still many places in the world where the number of people who do not own a smart/feature phone greatly outnumbers the current users. In these markets the companies that dominate are unlikely to be commonly known names from the West.

I'd agree, it's the ubiquity of digital cameras, plus social media making it normal/expected that people will post photos from a trip.

In the past photos were mainly for your own use and you'd talk to people about your trip. Now photos are how people tell each other about what they're doing and where they are. As social media has become competitive for many people that compounds the effect.

When I was travelling around SE Asia twenty years ago with a film SLR I was a novelty. At a viewpoint most tourists would take one photo with a point and shoot and I'd take perhaps 2 or 3. The rest of the time was spent looking & exploring.