Not saying it's not stupid, but FWIW I noticed ACRush (competitive programming legend) is behind that startup - at least it should mean it's not a full-blown scam.
I'm reasonably confident in Pony.ai's potential to develop an autonomous OS in China, they've got some real street cred, and in the time they've been at it appears they're coming along fine, possibly they've already surpassed Baidu.(Baidu did a huge restructuring because they weren't getting anywhere).
Pony has an American cousin: Aurora. Aurora was founded at almost the same time by ex-autpilot director Sterling Anderson and former Google SDC project lead Chris Urmson. Just like with Pony they decided they'd be better off starting their own company rather than try to work around the C-suite bullshit they had to put up with at their previous employers.
Now the thing is, top tier talent is short shrift, and the best would rather be working with a Chris Urmson or an ACRush solving hard problems than for a bunch of suits or egomaniacs who just don't get it.
So both Pony and Aurora have a special advantage when it comes to attracting talent that money can't buy. And talent is everything. Many of the best people were passionate about this long before the hype got out of control and the notion of getting stinking rich was ever a serious consideration.
Moving from the UK to Germany, I chose Deutsche Bank based on its reputation.
Pros:
* English! There is always someone on the phone who can speak English, and they can even send their letters in English. (for Germany, this is very rare)
* More "high touch" - there is a person assigned to your account
* I can't remember if this was the case in UK, but I noticed that transfers to some Western EU countries have no fees and happen almost instantly. Yay!
Cons:
* Buggy app and web interface, sometimes the login fails or hangs randomly (revenue was €31.95 billion in 2014, it's understandable that they can't afford spending too much on this)
* The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of paper with 100 codes printed on it (TAN list). This was a shock, but it's apparently common here.
* Taking advantage of new customers. They offered me a loan which I later realised had a ridiculous interest rate. (I guess this isn't exclusive to DB, but silly me expected that a good, more prestigious bank would value longer term customer relationships)
* Stupid useless cards. The default account (€5/month) comes with a card (EC Karte) that can only be used at German ATMs and in most German stores. Good luck trying to do anything online with it. For that you need a credit card (extra €5/month), the very idea of something like VISA Debit seems completely alien to Germans.
I'm a (german) DB customer as well, and I can't say I share a lot of these experiences.
> Buggy app and web interface, sometimes the login fails or hangs randomly
This never happened to me, maybe I'm just lucky. There used to be a problem with the web interface when you entered the banking system's URL without "https://" but that's not really the same.
> The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of paper with 100 codes printed on it (TAN list)
I think the TAN list is just there to get you started (and for some technophobic Germans). I used it to set up SMS TANs immediately, and I think there is still an option for a dedicated TAN generator device (at least there used to be). Don't use the TAN list!
> Stupid useless cards. The default account (€5/month) comes with a card (EC Karte) that can only be used at German ATMs and in most German stores.
An EC Card is the thing you need to go shopping in Germany. It's entirely appropriate for this country, and contrary to what you claim it works just fine internationally (at least mine does). While it's true that some banks offer a separate VISA credit card, it shouldn't be a problem for you to get one elsewhere. As for VISA debit cards, I'm not sure if those even exist in Germany.
Actually most of the time German VISA and MasterCards work as a debit card. Payments are cleared from your checking account / Giro, instantly or nightly, so you are never really in debt, rather than being a second account that is always negative and partially or fully paid off each month. I am not sure which type is more common, but I usually ended up with the debit card style.
> The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of paper with 100 codes printed on it (TAN list). This was a shock, but it's apparently common here.
Well whoever can hack your password, mobile TAN or TAN reader device will likely still not hack into your paper TAN list. There's something to be said for a "physical layer".
> Well whoever can hack your password, mobile TAN or TAN reader device will likely still not hack into your paper TAN list.
They are frequently hacked by phishing (intercepting the bank site, changing out the reciever and asking for the TAN code nevertheless). chipTAN for example works by optically transmitting the transaction details to a small handheld device with your banking card inserted, and the handheld device shows you the IBAN and amount... foolproof.
In Australia, pretty much every bank account will include a free Visa / Mastercard debit card, built-in to your ATM card. You can also buy them in supermarkets as reloadable gift cards, or post offices as international travel cards. Though they typically won't work in Germany, since most German stores only accept EC Cards and not Visa / Mastercard.
Different countries, different markets, right? Most Germans don't have a CC (if so, then often only for vacation). Inside Germany, the preferred payment version is direct debit. For ecommerce usually paypal as well. Everybody has an EC card (=debit card) issued by their bank and uses that for paying without cash in shops. Even with a CC you wouldn't be able to pay in many of them.
I don't know many Germans that do not have a credit card these days. You are right that the EC card gets used day-to-day (but maybe less than cash) but most Germans have a credit card for online shopping.
I have ING DiBa and it is the cheapest account ever here in Germany — they even give you a free VISA card, and free withdrawals in Germany and rest of the world. The only difference is that there's no physical office, so you have to use their website, which is good, and never had problems with it.
Deutsche Bank is pretty expensive. The debit card (which is useless for shopping online, although most local online stores offer other alternatives to credit cards) is free for most people, and I think I pay about 20 EUR/year for my credit card. This is with another large bank.
> The way to authorise online transactions is with a piece of paper with 100 codes printed on it (TAN list). This was a shock, but it's apparently common here.
This is what I've had with all European banks. It's simple, secure and always in your wallet. What's the method you are accustomed to in the UK?
Some banks do an extra validation step in case of unexpected transfers (such as a large sum, or a new foreign destination account) by sending the required TAN index by SMS. You'll then look up the matching TAN from your list an put that in.
> * I can't remember if this was the case in UK, but I noticed that transfers to some Western EU countries
This is the law for all Euro-denominated transfers in the EU (even in the UK -- but unless your account is Euro-denominated they can still make money off the forex).
I keep all my dotfiles in a repo at ~/cfg, and have a script to perform tasks such as creating symlinks (e.g. ~/.emacs.el -> ~/cfg/emacs.el) and installing brew, antigen, etc.
If I have to use a Windows machine, CCleaner is one of the first tools I install, it's fantastic. On OS X I use App Cleaner (I run it in parallel with `brew cask rm` just to be safe). PS: That's numberwang! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOZtWZ56lc
I had a similar experience buying a somewhat expensive watch through them - my wife was surprised to receive a very fancy, and empty, box. However to their credit they sent another one immediately, no questions asked. I really hope for Amazon to fix the issues OP pointed at, as an amazon.de customer I'm extremely happy with them.
This made me think of "The Making of: Dust", which describes the iterative (and serendipitous) process of creating [two of] the most well-known Counter Strike maps. I think it's a brilliant how a design that feels obvious involves a lot of work and uncertainty.
> But meeting the needs of customers is what I get paid to do
That was like being slapped with a good dose of pragmatism – I love it!
Wrt the later part of your post, try Dart. It's annoying in entirely new ways, but it does away with a lot of JS pains; it's also mature, powerful, and production-oriented. It even comes with a VM to run it in, so you can pretend it's a real –boy– language. Its obscurity also means that it can be hard to come across help/tools (emacs completion, anyone?), but despite all the shortcomings I enjoy using it, and am happy to back Google's bet on Dart.
Same [1], but I'm considering deleting it, as most of them are shit anyway. After seeing Assembly die in less than 2 years [2], I filtered my side project ideas through a "do you see this running in 10 years?" filter, and I saved them as bookmark folders [3].
cask.space: website for brew cask packages - categories, info, screenshots, discovery, etc.
"deep" ai: strong artificial intelligence - more of a career goal than a side project
docsite: simple, standardized landing pages for doctor's offices, á la jameda or zocdoc
games: tons of game dev resources and indie game websites - if I ever find time to work on one, I love game development
peer interviews: p2p pair mock interviewing for interview practice - an interest of mine (github.com/andreis/interview)
sidelog: a tool to organize [ideas for] side projects + collaboration
