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shasheene

1,271 karma · joined September 23, 2013

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shasheene··on Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality
To clarify the history:

SpaceX only entered the Commercial Crew Development [1] program by winning funding as part of CCDev 2 funding in April 2011, allowing it to develop the Dragon 2 launch abort system. They later won funding form both phases of CCiCap (Commercial Crew integrated Capability) funding in December 2012. (I believe that's in-flight abort testing etc).

The technical gains (especially reusable rockets) was moved along more by the help funding Falcon 9 initially through the commercial cargo development (COTS) and International Space Station resupply (CRS) contracts (which ensured the survival of SpaceX for a few more years). [2]

Commercial Cargo was actually a George W. Bush era policy - part of his 2004 plan [3], and the CRS contract was awarded before Obama was even inaugurated!

So far, Bush's Space Shuttle cancellation did more for SpaceX than Obama's Constellation Program cancellation (though that may changes once MCT/ICT is up and running and causes SLS to be potentially cancelled)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportat... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_for_Space_Exploration

shasheene··on An LA man who has built dozens of tiny houses for the homeless
Temporary emergency accommodation and mobile shower buses are helpful, but as often gets repeated, "homelessness is more than houselessness" - for the longer term homeless population, there's often deep drug, alcohol and mental health issues acting as barriers against re-integration into society.
shasheene··on When Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack
Nope! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Link_Cable#Fourth_generat...
shasheene··on When Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack
Hmm, apparently they don't have to start until 2017 (after looking into the (2014) EU directive, it's still unclear to me the timeline of events leading to MicroUSB adoption and how it is enforced)
shasheene··on When Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack
Oh, I stand corrected! Could have sworn there was more. Completely agree MagSafe is a really good innovation though!
shasheene··on When Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack
Yep you're completely correct! Maybe I was thinking about the link cable changes (between GBA/GBA SP and the GBA Micro) :/
shasheene··on When Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack
This reminds me of the "feature phone" era in the early 2000s, where every phone had a proprietary charging port, proprietary headphone jack and the removable memory interface was not yet standardized on MicroSD.

Thankfully European Union pushed for MicroUSB standardization. While vendors (like Apple) can still get around it by bundling an adapter in European markets, it was enough to push the entire industry to standardize.

Still, both Nintendo and Apple still change charging port standards frequently (and not adopting the universal standards even when they're superior): the original GBA used a certain proprietary charging port, then both GBA SP and the original Nintendo DS shared a (different) charging port. But Nintendo DS Lite used another standard (looks a lot like MicroUSB but wasn't). Finally all handhelds since DSi (including DSi XL, 3DS XL and New 3DS variants) all use another proprietary variant!

New 3DS systems don't even ship with AC adapters! Not even a cable from the proprietary 3DS connector to USB type A! This means little Johnny will get between 0 and 1 charges out of the system on Christmas Day, while his exasperated mother has to go find a shop that's open during the holiday period just to charge the device.

Very surprising since Nintendo have sometimes been very good regarding backwards compatibility of interfaces on their hardware - Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and Gamecube all shared the same video cable (a proprietary connector to composite audio/video out via Red/White/Yellow RCA connectors)

Apple of course do it with constantly changing MagSafe variants, as well the old 30-pin iPod/iPhone connectors (and not switching to the MicroUSB standard) and chasing Firewire (and to a much less degree Intel Thunderbolt) and most recently choosing the superior (to USB2.0) reversible Lightning connector over the new industry standard, USB3.1 Type C.

The reasons for doing this appear to be mostly related control of an ecosystem to enable price gouging. (Can't really be due to increasing water resistance, as competitors show it's possible to have even better water resistance without removing any standardized jacks)

shasheene··on GitLab Master Plan
From [1]:

> Tools such as GitHub and Bitbucket choose the name pull request since the first manual action would be to pull the feature branch. Tools such as GitLab and Gitorious choose the name merge request since that is the final action that is requested of the assignee

I think GitLab are right to choose 'merge request', it has an immediately obvious meaning compared to 'pull request'

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/29/gitlab-flow/

shasheene··on Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100M dollar lesson) (2012)
My understanding is the stock options gets released overtime ("vests") following a fixed schedule.

So it's basically part of the compensation he hadn't yet earned...

shasheene··on Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100M dollar lesson) (2012)
Do all large US tech companies have employment policies where a long-term employee (who got a raise and promotion a few weeks earlier) can be forced out without even any prior hint of a performance issue?

I understand California is an 'at-will' state, but I'd think that the wealthy tech companies who compete to attract talent with free food and gyms would have slightly better management policies (at least for the long-term engineering staff)

Though given this particular individual apparently was an extremely early Facebook employee (likely >100M of vested stock options), he doesn't need the job security to afford rental contract in San Francisco (first month rent + 2 month security deposit, which can be a hefty sum in SF)

shasheene··on Japanese writing system basics
If anyone is interested in this kind of etymology, academic Kenneth Henshall has written 'A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters' which contains the etymologies for the ~2000 general use Kanji. Over the millennia of evolution of the characters, some characters have multiple disputed etymologies which are still unresolved by the academics who study the history.

For the record, 食 is a pictogram of a small amount of food (the "roof" looking thing) stacked on a heavily stylized pictogram of a kind of table or plate (do an image search for 'takatsuki table'). It's claimed the Japanese word for bean 豆, has an older stylization of the same takatsuki table with a little bit of food at the top.

From a learning to read and memorization perspective, most people will probably find doing Look/Cover/Write/Check type drills (either manually or with a spaced repetition flashcard program like Anki) much more effective than using mnemonics based on (sometimes very complex) etymology.

shasheene··on SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch
> If the end-to-end launch service is priced at $60 million, 70% is $42 million, with the other 30% ($18 million) that needs to be paid each launch. Assuming the cost of all re-use is 100% free (gas and go), a full passing on of the savings would mean the second launch (which has a free first stage) could be priced at $18m + ($42m/2) = $39 million.

Oops, I mixed up two seperate points and can no longer edit the comment: I should clarify this math is for selling re-usable launches from scratch. Assuming two (and only two) launches per first stage with zero dollar refurbishment, SpaceX can sell two launches at $39 million and achieve the same profit, a 35% discount to customer. This is what will happen in the longer term: there may not be any full priced $60 million flights, so even the first flight of a booster will be re-usable pricing.

That said, currently we're in a weird place where existing customers are paying the full price ($60 million) for a freshly manufactured rocket, but subsequent re-use customers technically need only pay $18 million. While SpaceX could give a giant discount to all secondary customers this is not a long term pricing strategy because it requires a prior customer to "pay off" the first stage with a fully priced launch, which won't happen in the future. (SpaceX likely eventually needs to price closer to the amortized value for all customers -- even the first, if they want to achieve their goals of reducing prices, gaining more of the existing launch market and increasing demand).

shasheene··on SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch
Remember in the current Falcon 9 design, they are only reusing the first stage -- reported to account for 70% of the cost of the rocket (which is of course different to the retail price of launch service), and attempting to recover and reuse the fairing, an aluminum honeycomb core + carbon fibre sheet enclosure the size of a city bus, which is thought to add a couple million dollars per rocket including capital costs (SpaceX is thought to have limited capacity to produce fairings at a high rate, which is why they're chasing reuse).

They still need to rebuild the entire second stage each launch, and continue to pay the salaries of 4,000+ employees.

If the end-to-end launch service is priced at $60 million, 70% is $42 million, with the other 30% ($18 million) that needs to be paid each launch. Assuming the cost of all re-use is 100% free (gas and go), a full passing on of the savings would mean the second launch (which has a free first stage) could be priced at $18m + ($42m/2) = $39 million.

That's a 35% discount off $60 million. SpaceX haven't proven that reflying a returned booster is safe and reliable. It will take many relaunches to gain statistical knowledge of safety of the fleet they're building.

If SpaceX can reliably relaunch the first stage 5-10 times with minimal refurbishment costs, the amortized costs drop dramatically. During the development of the Merlin 1, testing aimed for 10 full duration (3 minute) test fires. I can see SpaceX aiming for 5-10 flights per booster with the current iteration of Falcon 9 over the longer term.

I encourage anybody interested to play around with this spreadsheet [1]. If the current design can be proven to have say 5 launches per Falcon 9 booster, that's a 65% saving to SpaceX. Falcon 9 is already the cheapest vehicle in its class (though some providers are cost competitive if doing dual launches on say, an Ariane V). The Russia's Proton rockets were reasonably cost competitive, but their reliability has proven to be very low in recent times.

As Amdahl's Law notes, as the number of reliable relaunches per rocket with minimal refurbishment costs increases towards infinity, the total cost will asymptotically approach the currently non-reusable portion of the costs (so in the current design it's the second stage, launch operations, fuel, fairings etc)

In a few decades, SpaceX wants to get airplane like re-use (fully re-usable with thousands of flights per vehicle lifetime), where each passenger pays a marginal cost of roughly the jet fuel cost and inspections and refurbishments don't happen every single flight but at set intervals. That's a probably several design generations away though (human Mars landing will certainly happen first)

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/144Y_OVmFFYTh_zTiV-FH...

shasheene··on Healthy clones: Dolly the sheep's heirs reach ripe old age
Other than being kept outside rather than in a barn, what are the reasons for these clones having longer life expediencies than Dolly the Sheep? Improvements in this somatic cell nuclear transfer process?
shasheene··on Master Plan, Part Deux
Yes, self-funding was a definitely the core part of the plan. Here's the original "master plan" text from 2006 [1]

  Build sports car
  Use that money to build an affordable car
  Use *that* money to build an even more affordable car
  While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
  Don't tell anyone.
I think the term "that money" ('that' is italicized in the original) is pretty clear he means funding from the profits of the prior models. (Elon Musk has definitely articulated the funding thing in interviews.)

Also, the summary Elon Musk has just posted continues using the same italicized emphasis:

  Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive
  Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
  Use *that* money to create an affordable, high volume car
[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
shasheene··on Master Plan, Part Deux
Hopefully Tesla will be able to achieve this new plan. Looking back at the first 'master plan' from 2006, it's clear that it failed pretty badly as Tesla Motors wasn't close to being able to self fund its goals over that time.

Since the first master plan was published in 2006, Tesla Motors has raised money privately (during its near death experience in 2008), sold a 10% stake to Daimler (which was recently divested), went public which has a side effect of raising even more (though the main reason to IPO in most cases liquidity to existing investors), and since then have continually raised money from the public market every year or two. There's probably private and public capital raisings since 2006 that I'm forgetting too (and they raised other capital streams like debt, such as the DoE loan)

The very lofty stock price of Tesla in recent years has helped it fund Model S, Model X and Model 3 designs, development, manufacturing (at large scales) and delivery, as well as the building of a large battery factory which Tesla owns a stake in. This constant fund raising has kept Tesla alive and I don't argue that it was very good corporate governance by Elon Musk and team to get Tesla Motors to where it is now (approaching the delivery date for the first Model 3 shipments and having a huge capacity to manufacture battery packs).

However, it's still a failure in its attempt to bootstrap the funding of Model 3 based on sales of previous models.

Of course, Tesla and SpaceX has consistently ended up achieving great things, even if the timeline is optimistic and the budget ends up blowing out. But issuing stock and eventually debt can only stretch Tesla so far. Hopefully Tesla can become a more sustainable business before that happens.

shasheene··on Tesla misses production target by 15%
I think you're misinterpreting his statement. I think he's noting that missing production targets is better than rushing through production and then shipping poorly manufactured cars
shasheene··on Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus
One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012).

That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

shasheene··on Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations
Japan had a widespread pension fraud scandal that made headlines in 2010: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071

From my understanding, the government is extremely inefficient technologically (it wouldn't surprise me if most population records are still in paper form and faxed between government departments)

shasheene··on Working fewer hours would make us more productive
Are you really John Carmack?

(As of writing, account created 325 days ago, 1 comment and 2 karma)

It shouldn't really matter because it's 'appeal to authority', but thoughts on worklife/productivity by the Elon Musk's or John Carmack's of the world really do have more impact

shasheene··on Dick Smith Is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time
You may be interested in checking out this series of blog posts [1] (with a surprising cameo by Dick Smith himself in the comment section)

[1] http://goughlui.com/2014/11/09/tech-flashback-dick-smiths-fu...

shasheene··on Raspberry Pi microSD card performance comparison
I'm not really comfortable with the alteration of timestamps. Much prefer they reflect reality.

Pushing a new timestamp to a list for every edit/resubmission makes me more comfortable, and keeps the immutability aspect (a trustable record of history).

I'd also prefer being able to see the full edit history of comments, so assign weights to my views accordingly (a grain of salt).

shasheene··on Google services set for 'return' to China
It's wrong to capitalize every noun in an English sentence. The only words that need capitalization are 'proper nouns' (eg, names of countries, companies, places etc), and the first letter at the start of a sentence.
shasheene··on The Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD Review
It seems pretty clear that PCIe-based solid-state drives using the NVMe protocol (and U.2 or M.2 connectors) will have much higher performance than AHCI/SATA over the next 5+ years (for both latency and throughput).

Since coreboot (with TianoCore or SeaBIOS) and the impressive nouveau and radeon projects, there's fewer places binary blobs can hide on a modern computing system.

One of the bigger exceptions is the drive controllers (which processes AHCI/NVMe messages and things like wear levelling). Besides restrict freedom and performance experimentation, it's also a security issue, given the scope for man-in-the-middle attacks [1]

Now at the start of NVMe's reign, it's probably an especially good time to start a project to make an open-source replacement to the proprietary firmware blobs of SSDs/flash memory! :)

[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554

shasheene··on VW Scandal Will Speed Up Diesel's Demise
You might be interested in this great New York Times aricle (PR piece) for the VW/Audi "TDI" engine that they were marketing heavily a few years ago, long before the current mileage/emissions scandal: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/automobiles/efficiency-imp...

It goes into the public's views on diesel over time. The article actually was discussed on HN too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6079973

shasheene··on Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM
Virtual reality would benefit a lot from from 16000x16000 PER EYE. Rendered at 120+ frames per second with 10,000Hz eye tracking for foveated rendering (120fps may be too low for that though).

For the goal of full VR, computing tech has a long way to go

shasheene··on James Watt: A Twelve-Year Flash of Genius
I was looking for a list of resources, but your comment was long and insightful. Thanks for taking the time up to write it
shasheene··on James Watt: A Twelve-Year Flash of Genius
What resources should I consume to get a realistic view of industrial development ?
shasheene··on Show HN: Automated personal bookkeeping for hackers
Thanks for this. I've been looking for a solution for this problem for a while and this looks like a good attempt.

While bank statements scraping or API is good, it may be useful for somebody to note that that it's often possible to import your historic bank statements using scanned images or PDFs. Excel and many accounting programs have this feature. (I haven't personally done this yet though)

shasheene··on Chile is introducing free higher education
There's no longer a discount for paying fees up front: http://studyassist.gov.au/sites/studyassist/news/pages/chang...
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