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Hasnain says:

Totally agree. CS folks begin to see everything as black and white and try to apply that to the world at large when things are often fairly nuanced.

Posted on 2017-04-25T04:31:53+0000

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The new status symbol: it’s not what you spend – it’s how hard you work

The rich used to show how much they could spend on things they didn’t need. Today, a public display of productivity is the new symbol of class power

Click to view the original at theguardian.com

Hasnain says:

"Today, the old slogan of the labor movement sounds like utopian science fiction. Imagine a society that claimed so little of our labor. Imagine a world where the poor didn’t have to work so hard to exist, and the rich didn’t have to work so hard to appear worthy of their wealth, because rich and poor didn’t exist."

Posted on 2017-04-25T00:59:58+0000

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Analysis | Trump wants NASA to send humans to Mars pronto — by his second term ‘at worst’

He asked an astronaut what the timeline is for going to the Red Planet. She replied: “Well, as I think your bill directed …"

Click to view the original at washingtonpost.com

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Here’s Why Juicero’s Press is So Expensive – Bolt Blog

Last week Bloomberg published an article exposing how easy it is to “hack” Juicero’s produce packs by squeezing them with your hands…

Click to view the original at blog.bolt.io

Hasnain says:

"Our usual advice to hardware founders is to focus on getting a product to market to test the core assumptions on actual target customers, and then iterate. Instead, Juicero spent $120M over two years to build a complex supply chain and perfectly engineered product that is too expensive for their target demographic.

Imagine a world where Juicero raised only $10M and built a product subject to significant constraints. Maybe the Press wouldn’t be so perfectly engineered but it might have a fewer features and cost a fraction of the original $699. Or maybe with a more iterative approach, they would have quickly found that customers vary greatly in their juice consumption patterns, and would have chosen a per-pack pricing model rather than one-size-fits-all $35/week subscription. Suddenly Juicero is incredibly compelling as a product offering, at least to this consumer."

Posted on 2017-04-24T22:51:04+0000

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Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting biodegradable solution to plastic pollution

Scientists have found that a caterpillar commercially bred for fishing bait has the ability to biodegrade polyethylene: one of the toughest and most used plastics, frequently found clogging up landfill sites in the form of plastic shopping bags.

Click to view the original at phys.org

Hasnain says:

Really exciting. And also fairly brutal scientific methods.

"To confirm it wasn't just the chewing mechanism of the caterpillars degrading the plastic, the team mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags, with similar results."

Posted on 2017-04-24T22:45:32+0000

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BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

A recent string of robberies on BART trains took a frightening turn when dozens of juveniles swarmed an Oakland station over the weekend and commandeered a train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at least two with head injuries, witnesses told the transit agency.…

Click to view the original at sfgate.com