Hacker News Reader

hopon Invisible Bike Helmet Inflates Before Impact

Has to be very hard to separate signal from noise on the deployment of the air bag. Those dummies were in very controlled environments and the helmet deployed at very low rates of acceleration change. In the hit from behind demonstration, you can see the rider's head experienced only around 1g of acceleration and little jerk.

It would get annoying as hell when this thing senses similar accelerations from non-car-hitting-you movements like bending over to roll up a pant leg or changing positions. Prankster friends would have a heyday too.

Dainese has an has an impressive motorcycle airbag suit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo9Vlt5tGwY

tl;dr - That thing would go off all that time if they made it sensitive enough to work.

hopon The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions

They follow the letter of the law. If the law is bad, change the law, don't bash Google for managing it's tax liability cost effectively and accuse them of being evil.

hopon The reverse job applicant

Your resume could be part of the problem - http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/AndrewHorner.Resume.pd...

Some constructive criticism: Thats a lot of ink to print that out, drop the black and grey banners. Try using a resume theme from Pages or Word for a start and just use black fonts on a white background. Use Myriad Pro or something more modern than Arial. Make it one page. Your first entry shouldn't be that you can use OSX and WinXP, my mom can do that.

Drop "Proficient in...", it sounds like you just know enough to get by. I would also drop your high school info to be more concise. Your HS GPA says "4.58 (weighted out of 4.0)" Either its bad math or its not out of 4. And I would switch up your order of things - employment, education, skills & projects combined.

Good luck!

hopon Apple Has $51 Billion and a Shopping List. Is Facebook On It?

List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...

Looks like they go after companies mainly for talent and IP. Facebook's biggest asset is their network effect and 500M eyeballs, not the software or talent, though I'm sure they have a lot of talent. Now that they are designing their own chips, after the PA Semi and Intrinsity buys, maybe silicon would fit the bill as a big aquisition for them - AMD (4.7B) or Nvidia (6.5B).

hopon Ray Ozzie leaving post as Microsoft's chief software architect

In the same sense, would you say Bill G was prototypical CEO material? No, but look what he built. Ozzie is awkward too, but he founded and sold two software companies for a fortune. Zuckerberg is introverted and awkward too, but look what he has built. The notion that a CEO, especially in tech, should be a business degree toting, people-person, non-technical CEO like Ballmer is wrong.

hopon Peter Thiel: $100k grant to 20 founders who drop out of school

This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it.

He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool.

And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.

hopon Peter Thiel: $100k grant to 20 founders who drop out of school

Learning is a life long process. I would very much encourage my kid to do it - they would get to bring a passionate idea to fruitition, get exposed to running a company and get mentored by very smart entrepreneurs.

If it doesnt work out, I'll still pay for them to finish their degree the next year.

What is the downside?

hopon Is IRobot a Potential Apple Acquisition Target?

Thanks, I am a mechanical engineer and worked on a DARPA challenge autonomous vehicle in college. These control systems get complicated very quick and I have much respect for the people working to conquer them.

hopon Is IRobot a Potential Apple Acquisition Target?

iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer

Really... they go to iRobot rather than NASA and the Joint propulsion Labratory, Boeing, Honda, Lockheed, DARPA, etc...?

How do you think and iRobot's control system compares to an autonomous predator drone?

hopon Is IRobot a Potential Apple Acquisition Target?

This author doesn't know Apple or the type of companies they acquire. If they wanted to make autonomous vacuums, they could do it 10x better in house within a year, iRobot is not a talent acquisition, and more importantly, they are not going in the cleaning business under Steve Jobs.

List of Apple aquisitions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition... if you don't have novel software or silicon design capability, Steve Jobs very likely doesn't need/want you.

hopon Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

Son, There is massive opportunity out there waiting for you to seize. Be thankful you were born in America and have the opportunity of free enterprise. Our country has a lot of debt and there will be inflation ahead, and taxes will likely be higher too, but they will be higher for everyone else so don't sweat it - wealth is relative.

Be frugal, marry wise and start a business. Take risks now while you are young. The future is bright.

hopon Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough

Swamp coolers use the same principle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

hopon Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough

He will change the world if he can get 50-60% efficiency. Photovoltaic cells would be out and parabolic mirrors aimed at a heating elements would take their place - even better, tubes running under asphalt streets all circulating water through JTEC heat exchangers.

A huge unmet need is extraction of heat energy at lower temperature differentials - it could put to use tons of waste energy at industrial plants, your car exhaust, h20 that leaves current steam generators, etc... The JTEC has the potential to make use of all this would-be entropy.

hopon Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough

Cover it with an insulated top when not in use. Your pool is colder than ambient because the top surface is constantly evaporating, leaving behind the slower moving molecules.

A solar heater would work better (if you have sun) because it will absorb more energy than ambiant air convected over the same area. And you would need a fan for a heatsink if its wasn't windy. http://www.amazon.com/SmartPool-SunHeater-Above-Ground-Pools...

A way for you to test it would be to do it on a small scale - maybe buy some copper tube and circulate an aquarium with the water filter pump.

hopon There was no stimulus

How about the older poor and middle class on fixed incomes. Inflation will destroy their buying power (Though it may make social security less insolvent).

hopon Technology = Salvation: An Interview with Peter Thiel

Thiel also invested in a seasteading initiative to build sovereign offshore floating colonies. Maybe its his technological answer to the housing bubble, as well as a libertarian Shangri-La.

http://reason.com/archives/2008/04/28/homesteading-on-the-hi... http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seaste...

hopon How Hipmunk (YC S10) Almost Became BouncePounce.com And Other Strange Tales

Just used Hipmunk for the first time, wow was that easy. Once they get the airlines on board directly, instead of via Orbitz, they will sail to the moon with this. A lot of "why didn't I think of this" is going through my head.

hopon Xmarks not quite dead yet

There is a big difference between anonymously pledging and cutting the check, but who knows.

hopon How Steve Ballmer told me what to do with my iPad

Yes and he has done it numerous times.

Ballmer talking shit about the iPhone - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7qrFO_p44

hopon How Steve Ballmer told me what to do with my iPad

Ballmer's incompetence is compounded when he talks shit. Its like The Emperor's New Clothes, except its been going on for so long that everyone knows hes not wearing invisible robes. All, apparently except for Bill G and the others on the board of directors that keep him gainfully employed.

hopon 37 Signals' New office (pics and video)

Yes but we will antagonize out of touch, established companies with sharks fitted with lasers while making better software/hardware. And have perennially dominating Formula 1 team.

hopon 37 Signals' New office (pics and video)

My dream office would be a Swiss chalet at the foot of a mountain. Multiple giant roaring fireplaces going 24/7. Ski in ski out. Girls in Bavarian outfits serving Oktoberfest beer and food. Backbone Internet speeds. 27" iMacs all around with matte screens and SSD's. Treadmill desks. Weightroom, sauna, soaking tub, raquetball, basketball court, full time Swedish masseuse. Banksy tags outside. Old masters and some crazy art from some tag artist friends inside. A Newfoundland that hangs out. No conference rooms. Giant whiteboards that slide up and down like they had in college. Sound proof meditation room. Those Red leather chairs they use on stage at allthingsD. Aston Martin fleet. Ridiculous gun room. Huge bbq, smoker on the rooftop. Taco truck outside. Automated laundry service. Machine shop with 5 axis CNC machines and 3d printers.

I don't know where that came from... seams prudent.

hopon Kevin Rose: Digg Turned Down $80 Million Acquisition Offer

Maybe that is a lesson learned for investors if the founder wants to be bought out early. I bet things would have turned out better if he had all his eggs in the basket still.

hopon Kevin Rose: Digg Turned Down $80 Million Acquisition Offer

At what valuation were these VC's putting $40M into Digg? If it was around $100M, then they would only have 40% of the company and 40% of an $80M buyout is $32M. And I can surely see why they wouldn't want to do that.

hopon What happens when it's all glass?

Hard to read with one or two sentences separated as paragraphs.

hopon What happens when it's all glass?

They are hitting everything on all cylinders – industrial design, mechanical engineering, material selection and finish, manufacturing, supply chain, hardware, customer service, marketing, advertising, retail stores, their website, company structure and internal product development processes. And the software they make is deep and wide – OSX , iOS, respective dev platforms, all the productivity utilities they make, iTunes (owning the music industry), whatever cloud apps they are working on now…

All are benchmarks of the industry.

I'm not a blind fanboy, just impressed and happy to witness a company constantly iterating and making themselves better.

hopon Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch

I wonder if TC was owned 100% by Arrington. That would be a big check in the mail. Hope the rest of the writers there get some dough.

hopon Why Groupon hurts businesses and you should be careful

Groupon is laughing at this and similar posts all the way to the bank.

Businesses bend over backwards to be on Groupon and there are few faster and cheaper ways to get a flood of new customers to try your service. It may be great for some and not so for others, but if you can't do the back of the envelope math (Posie's cafe) and ignorant to the risk (or success) of potentially 3,000+ people buying your groupon, then you have bigger troubles ahead.

hopon Google New: One place to find everything new from Google

Also, you cant middle click and open up a bunch of headlines in new pages. Hard to read, awkwardly arranged... I hope Google makes this better, even if its just in a standard blog format.

Edit: right clicking on text auto opens the page - this is weird.

hopon Groupon in Retrospect

They do that because it is a specific law in many states.