hoag

Nobody’s going to like to hear this but … Nextdoor. Especially if it’s a B2C app, ND is your best source for early testers and users. Source: got my first paid users for my first ever iOS app this way thanks to 200 waitlisted neighbors. It works.

My little nights/weekend project: 13 days from hyperlocal social validation on Nextdoor to live on App Store, this is my first-ever iOS app. And I absurdly, embarrassingly underestimated how complex/non-trivial this problem is.

Forget the bathroom doors; can we at least bring back proper shower stall design that uses full-length doors instead of the 1/3-length piece of glass? More glaringly, those of you who know the Hilton MUC for instance, it's utterly mind blowing what they've done: the shower stall floor is on the same plane as the rest of the bathroom floor -- i.e., it's not sunken at all -- and it's not sloped or otherwise angled, either, to prevent water from seeping under the door and flood the whole floor. And this isn't like one-off bug in one room: we've stayed their countless times, in different rooms, and every single one suffers this problem.

RIP Jane Goodall. Not to make a flippant pun but, thank you indeed for all the good you brought to all of us. By discovering humanity in our chimpanzee cousins, you helped us see the humanity in each other.

But I think this animosity is very much expected, no? Even I felt a momentary hint of "jealousy" -- if you can even call it that -- when I realized that we humans are, in a sense, not really so special anymore.

But of course this was the age-old debate with our favorite golden-eyed android; and unsurprisingly, he too received the same sort of animosity:

Bones was deeply skeptical when he first met Data: "I don't see no points on your ears, boy, but you sound like a Vulcan." And we all know how much he loved those green-blooded fools.

Likewise, Dr. Pulanski has since been criticized for her rude and dismissive attitudes towards Data that had flavors of what might even be considered "racism," or so goes the Trekverse discussion on the topic.

And let's of course not forget when he was on trial essentially for "humanity," or whether hew as indeed just the property of Starfleet, and nothing more.

More recent incarnations of Star Trek: Picard illustrated the outright ban on "synthetics" and indeed their effective banishment; non-synthetic life -- from human to Roman -- simply weren't ok with them.

Yes this is all science fiction silliness -- or adoration depending on your point of view -- but I think it very much reflects the myriad directions our real life world is going to scatter (shatter?) in the coming years ahead.

My newsletter is sad :(

I've loved reading Dan Ni's fantastic daily tech newsletter TLDR over the past year or so; I'm sure many (most?) of you subscribe to it too, and if you don't, you totally should @ tldr.tech.

A few weeks ago I was inspired to create a similar newsletter tightly modeled after Dan's winning formula, but focused on my three deepest passions: climate change, clean energy, and autonomous/electric vehicles (obviously, for those of you who know me).

Today I'd like to share it with you and hope that you will find it at least interesting, and optimally some non-zero value of useful.

Please meet Future Perfect.

Cheers!

My podcast is the only weekly podcast on autonomous cars in the world. Launched in Feb 2018, I've organically grown it to the #1 spot on Google (for searches like "autonomous cars podcasts") with nearly 10K listens per month. I published Episode 74 today -- the Season 2 finale -- and felt it was finally time to share with the HN community. Happy holidays and all the best for 2019!

So that was totally my initial reaction as well; I just didn't feel like dwelling on it. :P

heh yeah, that was my initial reaction too :)

My buddy built this whole system from the ground-up. Just wanted to share on his behalf.

This was my first -- and only -- Chrome extension that I ever wrote (I'm not a developer). And yes, I realize it's essentially just a simple iframe popup lol ... still, I'm pretty excited that after ~ 2 years, a blogger (Neil Patel) discovered it (#2 in his list @ https://neilpatel.com/blog/google-chrome-extensions-marketin...) and it's suddenly seeing a spike in installs! Woohoo! :)

Thanks! That's a great call. As one who happens to love (subtle) CSS shadows, I'm surprised I didn't think to do that already :) Not sure about the plax though... maybe.... really appreciate the feedback though!! (Curious: What do you think about the value prop? Is that something that makes sense to you?)

Just a simple test to see whether there's any general interest in such a service. Realized we rarely print photo books due to the high cost per book (typically $50-$100 for a high quality, hardback book)...

strange that it didn't auto-populate on HN then... oh well, amazing things never get old

Ironically though, doesn't slack HAVE a way to reference messages? You just copy a link to the post you want to reference.

Wait, what's going on here? What is astroturfing? Who did('nt?) what wrong?

This is freaking amazing

My favorite book of his -- besides Robots of Dawn -- was Nemesis. Absolutely incredible. Such a FEEL to that story.

Sure, fair enough. Agreed.

I know, same. Unfortunately most of the advice we get in the US is from asshats who don't know proper driving technique. Regardless, the fact is that in certain cars, looking over your shoulder is totally futile anyway; accordingly, you'd best have an alternative solution!

Sure. But unfortunately, here in the US, we have especially bad drivers. And even great drivers can make mistakes or get distracted. I have a virtually untarnished driving record, yet I'd still welcome such added protection. After all, pilots have enjoyed such systems for decades.

Totally agreed. That's why I really hope sluggish legislation doesn't get in the way of expediting the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles, and why I'm doing what I can to write about these issues as much as possible. I'm sorry to hear about your accident, but I'm glad (it sounds like?) you were (all?) ok. As a side tip, if only as an interim solution until you get a car with some sort of accident-avoidance features, may I suggest a tip for your mirrors to eliminate your blind spots? Your side mirrors should be used ONLY for viewing cars to your sides, while your rear mirror ONLY should view cars behind you. To test that it works, a car should slightly overlap from your rear mirror, into your side mirrors, and then into your peripheral vision. If your side mirrors are largely duplicating your rear mirror, then they are not set up correctly. Proof that it is possible -- necessary! -- to set your mirrors up like this and fully eliminate blind spots is that certain cars (like convertibles with the top up, or any car with unusually large/wide C-pillars) make it impossible to see over your shoulder, and require that you set up your mirrors correctly. Just a little tip, and I hope it helps! :)

What Daniel said. Unless you're living under a frickin rock, or are just totally uninformed -- or worse, MISinformed -- then surely you realize that the capitalism that America so proudly championed died a sad death over the last several decades. Plain and simple, a family making a combined salary of nearly $200K in a decent neighborhood shouldn't be struggling to pay for daycare, nor should mom and dad be unable to spend more time with their children. Nor should students be burned with grad school debt for the rest of their professional lives. Nor should people have to suffer -- either physically or financially, or usually, both -- because of medical expenses. It is not politics, it is rational common sense: just as taxes are used to pay for our fire and police protection, they should be used to pay for health and education too, including and especially providing a support network to enable the most critically important aspect of society, caring for one's family. Because after all, wtf is the point of everything else, if we can't produce a society where everyone is living comfortably, well-educated, healthy, and able to comfortably support their children? This isn't socialism. It's capitalism done right, the way it was done prior to about the 1970s. Geezus. As proud Americans it's our founding fathers' mandated DUTY that we speak out and say when our beloved country is slipping. Well, we're slipping. So let's do something about it already.

I'd like to understand why most Americans WOULDN'T vote for this sort of change to our society. Who WOULDN'T want this? Aren't we supposed to be "best at everything" in the world?

I actually suggested this theory a few weeks ago: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/volkswagen-different-theory-w...

You sure about that? Look what's on the front page of HN right now: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/08/volkswagen-emissio...

What??? Who changed this to Funders Network, and why? This is crap.

We get 10 votes for every tweet, so please share! Thanks!

huh?