jonjenk

Right. But this requires cooling to liquid helium temperatures. That's a separate level of hard and cost compared to liquid nitrogen.

Why not? Because the single greatest threat to Amazon's business continuity is a major quake in Seattle. Vancouver sits on some of the same tectonic plates.

It's likely that this move is, in part, an attempt to address the business continuity risk.

This is a joke. The latest MacBook Pro redesign is an affront to pro users.

At our hardware/software startup the new MacBooks are unusable due to the limitations of the USB-C ports. Our engineers refuse to engage in the dongle shenanigans necessary to get these computers to work with the displays and the other peripherals necessary to do their jobs.

We just purchased several of the old MacBook Pros to make sure we have enough for new hires and interns arriving this summer.

Apple cares about Pros? Heh.

Sure, but they aren't Web Scale!

Former head of engineering at Pinterest here. Marty was one of the first three engineers at the company. He is an amazing guy -- smart, personable, fun to work with.

This is a boon for Reddit and as a Reddit user I'm very excited. Fortunately Pinterest has a strong bench and can afford to share the wealth of their amazing engineering team.

Former Amazon person here.

This is totally wrong. Amazon retail has been running on AWS for years.

What you are describing is called "backdriving" the gearbox. Generally speaking, gear trains with high reduction ratios don't like to be backdriven. Small steel gear trains with ratios in the 1000:1 range can destroy themselves when back driven.

This is a pretty shitty apology. The key problem is that ekjp isn't owning the failures directly. Just look at the language in the post...

"We screwed up." "We haven’t communicated well..." "we acknowledge this long history of mistakes..."

This type of language shows a lack of ownership and accountability of the author. It's a huge red flag. If one of my employees wrote something like this I would never have accepted it.

A good apology would have started with something like, "I am sorry." Everything that happens at a company is ultimately the CEO's responsibility. The language used in ekjp's apology does little to reassure me that she actually feels like she owns the failures.

I know some of the people who have signed up for this and I can say with confidence that I'd happily take them at any salary.

The fact that some of the best and brightest in our industry have decided to do this work because it's important rather than because it's the most financially rewarding option is encouraging.

That level of accuracy would be hard to achieve. Most radio signals (eg. BTLE) don't travel well through water (eg. snow).

Additionally, if you've ever dug someone out in the field (or practiced doing so) it takes a lot of effort to move snow. Being within three meters isn't good enough.

"When I ride alone I can maybe go top to bottom in slightly under 20m but I'm flying and really pushing it the whole time, I wonder if the drone could even keep up in that situation (speed would be over 25mph almost the entire time)."

Where do you ski? 20 min at 25 mph implies an 8.3 mile long run.

I'm an engineer so when people ask if something is possible my honest answer has to be that anything is possible.

Would you allow me to rephrase your question? I'd rather answer the question, "What is the likelihood that the knob can be installed incorrectly or that the mechanical interlock will fail in a way that would allow the knob to unexpectedly turn the burner on when not intended?"

My answer to this question is that it would be EXTREMELY improbable that this would happen. I say this for the following reasons. 1) The part of the knob that allows the user to push the shaft inward to override the safety interlock is a completely separate piece from the part that turns the knob; 2) Both of these pieces are made of smooth, lubricious plastic such that it should be very difficult to install the knob in a way that they would bind; 3) assuming the user did install the knob in a way that made this possible it would be very obvious to the user that things are not right; 4) the knob software is written in a way that the knob will refuse to move from the off position without physical intervention from the user.

What I've described is generally called a defense in depth approach. You put a bunch of safety mechanisms in place such that all of which have to simultaneously for a bad event to occur.

Hopefully that helps.

I totally understand your concern. That's why we NEVER turn on the stove for you. All modern stoves require you to push the knob in to move it from the off position. The Meld Knob is mechanically incapable of defeating this safety interlock.

I'm one of the founders of Meld and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about our product or precision cooking and temperature control in general.

We were as surprised as you that this doesn't exist already. A traditional stove is an amazingly capable and flexible device. By adding some simple smarts to the burner control it's possible to do amazing things.

Induction stoves are good, but you might be surprised to learn that gas is even more precise. With gas you basically have infinitely fine control over the flow of energy to the pan since a gas valve is a linear analog control. Honestly, though, whether you have a gas or electric stove we can generally keep temps to within one degree (F) of a given target.