Hacker News: patman81

New comment by patman81 in "Dinner at a North Korean Restaurant in Shanghai"

patman81 — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 07:23:13 +0000

The article is from 2016. Did anyone find out if the restaurant is still open?

New comment by patman81 in "Migrating Large Heroku Postgres Instances to AWS Aurora Without Downtime"

patman81 — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:56:55 +0000

That's impressive. We struggle to find a way to "migrate" from AWS Aurora 1 to 2 (that is from MySQL 5.6 to 5.7). There seems to be no (easy) way to upgrade without downtime for large databases.

New comment by patman81 in "Fire your bad customers"

patman81 — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 08:51:20 +0000

Once you decide to "fire a customer", it may not be easy to get thru that process. It can be tricky if the cancellation started on the side of the software provider.

We run an enterprise saas business and at one point decided we can't work with a particular customer anymore. We informed the customer that we will terminate his service and cancel all his outstanding (unpaid) invoices.

Soon after that, the customer started to take legal action against our company. It was quite an ordeal for about 12 months. At least it helped us improve our contracts and legal processes going forward.

However, since than we are careful to vet new potential customers before we offer our software. If we feel the software isn't a good fit, we will tell the customer and work thru our concerns before signing a contract. Even if we may lose some potential customers in the process, it builds a more healthy and sustainable business.

"Avoid toxic customers." Is now part of our handbook.

New comment by patman81 in "Apple rejects Hey for second time, threatens removal from App Store"

patman81 — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:13:17 +0000

I was excited about WWDC next week. After reading about this, I just feel bitter about it.

New comment by patman81 in "Tesla Cybertruck"

patman81 — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 13:55:55 +0000

Based on the stated ranges of 250, 300 and 500miles (!), I would guess those battery sizes are 75, 100 and 150kWh. I hope the upcoming triple motor model S, will get that 150 battery pack next summer. That would mean 600miles of range for the new model S.

New comment by patman81 in "LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro"

patman81 — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 14:42:09 +0000

One way to calculate: 7years × 365days × 2k/day × 100 "experts" = 500m

New comment by patman81 in "Tesla’s new ‘light-years ahead’ navigation and maps engine is ‘almost done’"

patman81 — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 20:40:56 +0000

There was another Tesla software update announced as "almost done": a major update to Autopilot 2, with an all new neural net and what not.

This all new navigation system might include functionality to help, not only the human driver, but that new Autopilot as well.

At some point Autopilot and Navigation will have to merge. Right now, both systems operate completely separate.

But if those upcoming updates will allow Autopilot to follow the navigation system changing lanes thru highway intersections, than that would indeed be 'light-years ahead'.

New comment by patman81 in "Self driving cars and beyond"

patman81 — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 20:53:37 +0000

On the Tesla earnings call last week, Elon Musk stated that a software update coming in 3-6 months will allow Tesla cars with Autopilot HW2 to drive fully autonomous. At least on highways.

He's predictions are always late, so it may not be ready in August. But his predictions seem to come thru in end. If he can deliver by the end of the year or even next year, he would still beat all other car manufactures schedules.

New comment by patman81 in "Tesla Roadster"

patman81 — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 06:13:03 +0000

Wow, that‘s more than 400km/h

New comment by patman81 in "Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison (2014)"

patman81 — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 21:07:38 +0000

If you like this story, you can continue the story with "Softwar" a book about Oracle and Larry Ellison in quite the same tone.

New comment by patman81 in "Germans in the race to bring electric cars to market"

patman81 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 09:18:55 +0000

German highways are not ideal for a Tesla. The right lane is usually to slow, with numerous trucks going at about 90kph.

You can drive fast on the left lane, a Tesla goes up to 220kph super fast, but there is usually traffic and you frequenty have to slow down to 120kph for a while and than accelarate back to 220kph.

That frequent accelaration from 120kph to 220kph, is what kills range.

Ideally, if there is no traffic, you engage Autopilot and go with a constant 150kph for great range and good enough speed.

However you can't keep 150kph on the left lane, since BMWs and Audis will push you off when they come with 250kph or more.

New comment by patman81 in "Germans in the race to bring electric cars to market"

patman81 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 07:22:59 +0000

Uploading of collected data is indeed deactivated by default on Tesla's cars in the EU. But you can opt-in by checking a box in the cars setting. You can also opt-in to share driving videos from the eight cameras sourounding the car, to help improve the selfdriving system.

New comment by patman81 in "The long, winding road for driverless cars"

patman81 — Sat, 27 May 2017 05:46:30 +0000

Tesla Autopilot Hardware 2 is now up to par with version 1. (The most recent update increased the Autopilot highway speed to 150kph, same as version 1).

The next software update, scheduled for june, should bring automatic perpeticular parking, automatic windshield wipers and an improved "smother" autopilot.

Although perhaps disturbing for some, I enjoy the monthly software updates. Like a little surprise every month.

New comment by patman81 in "Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech"

patman81 — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 20:40:52 +0000

For what it's worth: The latest ETA for AP2 to reach parity with AP1 was tweeted by Elon Musk yesterday:

"It's been a bear to get done, but prob 10 days or so, depending on full speed autosteer test results" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/841041891747545089

New comment by patman81 in "Improving Supercharger Availability"

patman81 — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 10:06:05 +0000

Elon just tweeted:"We are going to modify this so that people only pay a fee if most bays are occupied. If the site is basically deserted, no problem to park."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/810135528783937537

New comment by patman81 in "SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch"

patman81 — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 06:14:00 +0000

Still amazing to watch! Can't wait to see the Falcon Heavy liftoff, followed by two simultaneous first stage landings.

New comment by patman81 in "IBM's Watson Chief on Future of AI"

patman81 — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 10:45:42 +0000

Is there a way to read Forbes articles without disabling content blockers? I don't want to go back to all those cookies and ad trackers.

New comment by patman81 in "Segway robot"

patman81 — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 09:42:21 +0000

That may be a cool thing, but the site is almost impossible to read. At least on my iPad. It might be complex to program that robot, but navigating their site shouldn't be.

New comment by patman81 in "Introducing AWS WAF"

patman81 — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 20:06:09 +0000

Now the only pice missing are AWS SSL certificates, for a one stop shop on the whole security stack. Perhaps tomorrow at the AWS keynote. Fingers crossed.

New comment by patman81 in "The Software Paradox: The Rise and Fall of the Commercial Software Market [pdf]"

patman81 — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:37:02 +0000

For existing software providers, the book recommends a transition to an recurring revenue model ala SaaS. Short term business incentives and technical limitations in an existing code base, may make this a tuff sell to existing software providers.

But the long term advantages are well argued in the book (less support costs, higher long term revenue per customer) and perhaps worth the costs of transition.

The recurring revenue model is particularly advantages for products with a strong lock-in.