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Usual rant .. I think paywalled articles don't have a place on Google search results and also HN. I suppose someone will reply telling me to change my user-agent or something else.

Edit: actually .. scratch that .. I should have an option on HN to not see paywalled links. Can someone on the dev team make that happen?


WP is not a solid paywall; there's just a limit counter. Read in an incognito window and dismiss when necessary.


What does "2x liquidation preference for $2,000,000" mean?


Liquidation preference means they are preferred when there is a liquidation. So if the company is sold the person with the liquidation preference gets their money out first at the liquidation preference ratio. In this case, $2Mx2 means if the company is sold for $10M even though they only own 10% they get the first $4M.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidation-preference.a...


It means that if the company liquidates -- IPO, sale, or dissolution being the more common forms -- the investor is first in line for $4,000,000. Then, any remaining money gets split among the other share holders. If there's less than $4m in the pool, then the investor gets it all and everyone else gets nothing.


My latest gen Apple TV wants to disagree with you. As does my wife's first gen Apple Watch ... both are magical turds IMHO.


I don't own an Apple Watch, but I know lots of people who do and love them.

But in any case, I think the last ten years of iPhone and iPad releases do somewhat agree with me.


So if we only look at Apple's successful products, we can agree that Apple's only makes "very carefully designed" things..


I think that holds for pretty much all of their products, successful or not.

But if you want to argue that Amazon is a better product company than Apple, then have at it.


Right. Cube, Ping, etc


It's amazing that the Apple TV is considered a turd. They seemingly did everything right. Support for third party apps, an awesome remote, decent power. Aside from missing 4k, what makes it such a turd?


The Apple TV is fine for what little I use it for. My main complaint is that I apparently can't use Siri for my own music collection. And that's basically the only music I play through the Apple TV. (It drives my stereo from my iTunes library.)


I absolutely LOVE my Apple TV. Best device in the house.


This comment really adds nothing to the discussion. Why is it being upvoted?


Amazon is killing it in IoT/Smart Home. However, IMHO, they are making a bit of mistake by not allowing developers to monetize their platform (at least the last time I checked). There were also certain device functions that apps could not utilize (e.g. programmatically mute and unmute). I suspect they'll have a wall garden approach to their new Echo devices too ... if this was open, they'd win it all (again, just my opinion).


Amazon subsidizes hardware by collecting information on the users, so they can't open their hardware. It's ironic because, like uBlock on Chrome, only a small percentage would change the hardware/OS anyway -- and those are the people who could try radical experiments and show Amazon what works.

Hopefully Google, Samsung or Microsoft(?!) will sell open hardware/firmware that isn't subsidized by collecting information.

Amazon is basically following the CueCat strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Failure

> The company's response to these hacks was to assert that users did not own the devices and had no right to modify or reverse engineer them. Threats of legal action against the hackers swiftly brought on more controversy and criticism.


Sources? Those are big claims to make.


Software mute/unmute has too much of a potential to be abused by 3rd parties in my opinion.

For your other comment, what kind of command-response skill could be monetized? Surely for the majority of use cases, the Alexa skill should remain free with your purchased/subscribed product on the other side? E.g. the "skill" to read NPR should always be free, but NPR is still monetized via subscription or commercials.

The only example that jumps out at me would be Amazon Echo Games, something like text-based adventures built for voice. Otherwise, skills themselves are just a gateway to an already monetized service, no?


This is not what you're taking about because it is not the Echo hardware, but I think Amazon lets hardware manufacturers access Alexa API from their devices, and those hardware makers can charge whatever they want (and could put whatever type of "app store" or "hackability" into their hardware, all of which could call the Alexa voice API: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service


Wish Canada did something like startup chile .. I'd move and do a startup in a heartbeat.


what ? If you don't live in Canada why would you want to the grant to be there ?


Wish they deployed this in Mountain View. I see like 20 of these a day going around aimlessly. I'd sign up as a customer!


Too easy for a competitor to hop on and get casual intel, maybe?


GM, Apple, and Uber are all testing in the Phoenix metro area, so I don't think that's valid - more likely good wide roads, weather, and regulatory environment.


Competitors that don't know where Phoenix, AZ is, I suppose.


Lot more regulation.


Shower? For me, that makes the lunch break workout impractical :(


I go to the gym in the early morning but when I worked out over lunch it was:

    00:00 - 00:05 Change into workout clothes
    00:05 - 00:40 Work out
    00:40 - 00:45 Shower (yes a shower only takes 5 minutes if you're not just relaxing under the water)
    00:45 - 00:55 Back into work clothes
    00:55 - 01:00 Back to the desk
Eat at the desk after the lunch break. If that's not practical you can cut the workout in half and have 20 minutes to eat which is rarely not enough time.

If you have a plan and don't waste time an hour is an exceptionally long time.


Yes, although it's usually a pretty short shower.

Typically, I do one heavy compound lift per day, mess around while I'm waiting for my coworker to finish running on the treadmill / lifting, and then do some ab exercises with her. We get some coffee from the cafe after that, and I eat my packed lunch at my desk.

Honestly, I really only need the shower on squat and deadlift days; bench and overhead press are comparatively light. I'm mostly in a holding pattern for fitness right now, as I work 12-hour shifts and then go to school full-time during the day. Once I'm not hating my life as much, I'll be able to do fitness that's a little more involved.


I knew a guy with an eye patch, and politeness prevented me from asking how that happened. Now I know that one of the causes is cancer .. but it is a bit surprising that I only learned that after this article.


How to play it???


https://stianj.com/what-are-you-syncing-about/

Found via the 'online version' link at the right.


I'm curious what the fundamental underlying tech is that is driving Lora and Sigfox? E.g. cdma has a few core ideas that make the magic work. What is the equivalent fundamental concept that is driving the low-power, long-range, low-bw communication?


Sigfox relies on

* Ultra Narrow Band (100Hz) modulation

* Low data rate (100 bits/s in Europe, at 14dBm/25mW) + lightweight protocol

* High receiver sensitivity, mostly SDR based

We've got a few youtube videos explaining this ... but mostly targeted for a generic audience. The "radio signal modulation" may have enough tech details to match what you're looking for : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGvM6KEDIdE&index=6&list=PLc...

We're also working on a publication of a standard UNB IoT protocol, Sigfox being one of its implementations. Should come within a few weeks.

There is a draft about the network architecture here : https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-zuniga-lpwan-sigfox-s...


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