11 ms·
Conditions of ACME's Unconditional Guarantee
- Cerium 6y agoI bought my parents one of the Klein bottles. It is really fun to hold something so useless yet interesting. I also thoroughly enjoyed the service provided. I received a complete inspection report, and the bottle was carefully packed and diagrammed.
- kmill 6y agoA colleague of mine purchased one of the Klein bottle hats, and they received some selfies of Stoll wearing it in his garden right before shipment :-)
- CliffStoll 6y agoYep -- but the reason isn't what you may think. Whenever I send out a Kleinbot, I take some photos, so when something goes wrnong, I can figure out my missteakes. Oh, but that's how I learn, alas...
- sloucher 6y ago"One side fits all" :-)
- barlo 6y agoHe also has an great warehouse setup in his crawl space. https://hackaday.com/2015/06/24/crawlspace-warehouse-includes-midget-forklift/ https://hackaday.com/2015/06/24/crawlspace-warehouse-include... Really impressive guy.
- jimbob45 6y agoCan second this. I found this highly worth the watch and I think about this weekly.
- CliffStoll 6y agoANd I can third this comment. I actually use the robot daily -- it's entirely utilitarian. Houses are small in Berkeley/North Oakland, and I've long outgrown my closet (and two kids & m'wife in a 2 bedroom house made for very tight quarters). So I the crawlspace became storage for zero-volume manifodls. Didn't take long before crawling around caused backaches - and thus, the mother of invention visited me in the guise of an idea of a remote controlled forklift. Cheers to all, -Cliff
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoCliff Stoll is a pretty funny guy. He also wrote a fascinating book about tracking hackers back in the day.
- Uhhrrr 6y agoSeconded! It gives very good flavor of life working at Berkeley and living there, and also the Internet of the day: https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787 https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...
- ananonymoususer 6y agoI read this book shortly after he wrote it. I was a junior engineer at a big company, and the final chapter (on humans being the weakest link in computer security) inspired me to run "crack" on the password (shadow) file of one of our networked Sun workstations. (I actually wrote some code to re-create the shadow file from the output of ypcat because we were running NIS.) Crack managed to obtain about 20% of the users passwords, including root. I wasn't an admin on that network, so I informed the admin and his reaction was that he did not care if I had admin on his network. (I ran a few others already.) One of the cracked user passwords struck me as funny so one day in the hallway I casually asked what that word meant (to the owner of the password). The terror-stricken user froze and asked me why I wanted to know. Instead of recognizing the issues associated with using a dictionary word for a password, he went and complained to my manager. I got called on the carpet for "hacking his windows account." (Apparently he used the same password everywhere.) Fortunately my boss had a good sense of humor and nothing came of it. This was before the company even had a computer security policy. A year or two later, doing what I did would become a fire-able offense.
- bigiain 6y agoHey everybody, I found Randal Schwartz's HN account! ;-) (For people who weren't Perl hackers in the mid-late '90s, Randal pretty much did exactly that while contracting at Intel, and got 3 felony convictions and 5 years probation, and it took him 12 years of fighting to get the felonies expunged. Be very very careful "trying out" security related things at your employer, without very clear written instruction showing it was authorised - you do not want to be the guy in front of a judge saying "it's part of my job description as a sysadmin!" when your employer is claiming otherwise....)
- sblom 6y agoCliff Stoll has appeared on the Numberphile YouTube channel dozens of times, and they're all informative and hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWJeBhzCJ_JXdaIXi_YJl7Bh https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWJeBhzCJ_JX...
- phobosanomaly 6y agoThis reminds me of the old Lindsay Publications reprint of Procedures in Experimental Physics from 1938. https://gingerybookstore.com/product143.html https://gingerybookstore.com/product143.html I believe it's only available used at this point, but: "Chapters include: laboratory glass blowing, laboratory optical work, technique of high vacuum, coating of surfaces by evaporation and sputtering, the use of fused silica, electrometers and electroscopes, Geiger counters, vacuum thermopiles and the measurement of radiant energy, optics, photoelectric cells and amplifiers, photography in the lab, heat and high temperature, notes on the materials of research, notes on the construction and design of instruments and apparatus, and molding and casting."
- ampdepolymerase 6y agohttps://archive.org/details/ProceduresInExperimentalPhysics https://archive.org/details/ProceduresInExperimentalPhysics
- phobosanomaly 6y agoVery cool! Quality on that scan is great. It's birdwalking a bit, but you posting that also made me check to see if Internet Archive has early editions of Vogel's Practical Organic Chemistry, and they do! Another really cool blast from the past. https://archive.org/details/Practical_Organic_Chemistry_Vogel/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Practical_Organic_Chemistry_Voge...
- CliffStoll 6y agoFrom Goldstein's Mechanics textbook, Jabberwocky of "The polhode rolls without slipping on the herpelhode in the invariable plane" (did I remember it right?)
- phobosanomaly 6y agoI have no idea how you pulled that one from the cobwebs of undergrad!
- Daub 6y agohttps://www.kleinbottle.com/cartoons_and_limericks.htm https://www.kleinbottle.com/cartoons_and_limericks.htm From the limericks page: Three jolly sailors from Blaydon-on-Tyne They went to sea in a bottle by Klein. Since the sea was entirely inside the hull The scenery seen was exceedingly dull.
- czzr 6y agoThat’s not a limerick, though. A limerick has 5 lines, for example: There once was a young lady called Bright Who travelled much faster than light She left one day, In a relative way, And returned on the previous night!
- zimpenfish 6y agoTo be fair, the heading on the page is "One sided verses & limericks:" and covers a wide spectrum of poetical types.
- Daub 6y agoYeh I know its not a limerick. I have seen a version of this as a true limerick in a book of 'science humor'. Looked for it but can't find. Every version online is this non-limerick version, presented as a limerick. I will update if I find the original.
- Daub 6y agoFound the book! Poem is on p46, together with a cute illustration. Turned out I imagined it was a true limerick after all. But a fun book nonetheless. https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=UGGhM2XKE_0C https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=UGGhM2XKE_0C The book is: Cooper W. A random walk in science. CRC Press; 1973. Surprisingly high citation index (58).
- czzr 6y agoIt’s ok - I got to nit pick and sneak a physics joke into HN, so all good. Thanks for the link to the book, that is fun.
- 6y ago
- F00Fbug 6y agoI received a Klein bottle as a gift. The box was covered in drawings by Cliff and the accompanying paperwork brings me as much joy as does my zero-volume container!
- CliffStoll 6y agoWhich should answer others' questions, Foof: I have fun with this micro-business. And (I hope) the joy is reflected in those who receive a zero-volume, one-sided flask.
- nayuki 6y agoHis website is where I first learned the term "dihydrogen monoxide". https://www.kleinbottle.com/why_acme.htm https://www.kleinbottle.com/why_acme.htm
- areoform 6y agoThis man has just given me half an hour of pure delight. I haven't laughed this much with unadulterated joy since I was a little girl. His enthusiasm and happiness and weltanschauung are contagious!
- JshWright 6y agoI'll never pass up an opportunity to proclaim that someday I hope to be as excited about something as Cliff Stoll is about everything.
- edoceo 6y agoTo help others: Welt·an·schau·ung: a particular philosophy or view of life; the worldview of an individual or group.
- kazinator 6y agoAlso: speicherverwaltung -- memory management. Learned it from the "spvw" abbreviation in CLISP sources. Hmm, how can I tie this ridiculous digression back to the topic? Oh, I got it: the original author of CLISP is also named Stoll.
- stefan_ 6y agoHe is no different in person. Don't miss his warehouse complete with forklift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU
- CliffStoll 6y agoWell, I think he's different in person...
- vermilingua 6y agoI wonder if the downvoters realise who they’re downvoting.
- ananonymoususer 6y agoCliff is a funny guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll
- CliffStoll 6y agoUm, I suspect that my kids may feel otherwise...
- ananonymoususer 6y agoDon't sweat it Cliff. My kids have a low opinion of me too. Love your work BTW! Here's a good one for you about the younger generation: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ― Socrates
- ihaveajob 6y agoI got one of those as a birthday gift in grad school, and it's a lot of fun, even 10 years later. I used to fill (yes) mine with tinted water for added joy.
- tptacek 6y agoIt's a giant pain to get anything out of them, though, or, for that matter, to clean them (unless you have a trick for it?).
- CliffStoll 6y agoYou betcha, yew bet TeePeeTee! I use two magnets, each covered with chamois cloth. Even then, it's a challenge.
- CrazyStat 6y agoI don't own one, but as far as getting liquid out inverting the bottle and siphoning out of the bend seems like the easiest way.
- OscarCunningham 6y agoI think that would fail because air wouldn't be able to get into the bulb. If you've got a tube for siphoning I think a better strategy would be to blow air in thus pushing the water out.
- CliffStoll 6y agoAnd, I'll bet, you've done some research in the nature of small ecosystems growing in almost-closed bottles...
- tptacek 6y agoI have one of these in my living room, it came with a sticker and a nice note, and I highly recommend them.
- CliffStoll 6y agoAnd thank you for your kind note, Tipta Cek! May it last for many aeons....
- IntemerateApe 6y agoI love the design of that site!!
- CliffStoll 6y agoUh, it's from the original hardcoded html from the late 1990's. Every time I adopt a tool, it's dropped by the software company or the open source group disappears and the code slowly corrodes. Guess it's sorta the same with me, growing old...
- jasonhansel 6y agoEvery product should have a website like this.
- aaron695 6y agoI have to say I immediately assumed his update time was fake until I kept reading. "Cliff last updated this page on Sept 5, 2020, while worrying about California's forest fires" Next step, create bot that pulls headlines and auto-updates timestamps.
- CliffStoll 6y agoUh, you somewhat overestimate my abilities ... as well as my free time!
- reificator 6y agoMy favorite Cliff Stoll quote: > customer service is easy when you run a zero volume business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831394
- cgb223 6y ago> I slightly guarantee your Klein Bottle for THREE MONTHS against any cracks or breakage, whether due to earthquakes, clumsy undergrads, or greasy fingers. Just mail us a fragment and $10, and we will send a replacement. What a perfect solution to the fake defective / return problem!
- hnaln 6y ago> intentionally break klein bottle > send it back piece by piece for more bottles > repeat with new bottles for infinite bottles Not a perfect solution haha
- x1798DE 6y agoI assume you send a fragment and the receipt or something, otherwise you can smash your klein bottle into many fragments and the return policy becomes a bulk discount. (Though this particular business seems low volume enough that you can probably easily deal with that problem so long as you don't have to scale it.)
- CliffStoll 6y agoTo my surprise, I haven't found anyone breaking their bottle on purpose. (or on a porpose). One of the nicest things about running this micro-business is that, sooner or later, I'll meet most of the people who own a Klein bottle. The math & physics community is a wonderful place...
- tnorthcutt 6y agoI’m not really part of the math and physics community, but I just wanted to say I’ve been delighted by everything I’ve ever seen that you’ve done. You make the world a more interesting and fun place.
- CliffStoll 6y agoThank you, oh North Cutt! It's both an honor and a joy to find myself a member of several impressive communities ... old-style hackers, math & physics jocks, people with solder-burns on their fingers, and left-coast techies.
- hirundo 6y ago> WARNING! Acme constructs each Klein Bottle from genuine Baryonic matter. Do not allow your Acme Klein Bottle to come in contact with antimatter or unpredictable results may occur. Funny, the Pierson's Puppeteers have a similar warning for their General Products hulls.
- v64 6y agoCliff, if you're still hanging around the thread, I want to thank you for this Klein bottle I got over a decade ago, back when I was a mere math undergrad. [1] Despite a number of close calls and myriad stories about strange objects getting trapped in it, it's maintained its structural and multidimensional integrity over the years. Thank you again! [1] https://i.imgur.com/vlkIcKu.jpg https://i.imgur.com/vlkIcKu.jpg
- quelsolaar 6y agoI sell software and have for many years, and I dont advertise it but I always give 100% money back to any unhappy customers (granted there is very few of them, for the last 2 years I have had one). Usually if someone mails me expressing unhappiness, I start by giving them a full refund even if they dont ask for it, then I mail them to tell them that I have refunded them, usually i let them keep the license, and then I try to engage with them to fix the problem. Usually when this happens, its well worth the license fee to figure out whats wrong to improve the product, and the customer is eager to help.
- noway421 6y agoA software product would be different since it would have much higher margins.
- CliffStoll 6y agoOh, but I understand what you're saying, Solaar. You make your software to solve problems and make situations better and people happier -- if that doesn't happen, you'd way rather simply refund their money.
- quelsolaar 6y agoYes. I think its 3 fundamental objectives: -I want people who use my product to be happy with it. -If they are not, I dont want them bad mouth me. -When someone is unhappy, that an excellent opportunity for me to learn, so I want to incentivize my customer to engage with me in a productive and not antagonistic way.
- RotANobot 6y agoThis seems like an excellent way to run a business for all involved.
- quelsolaar 6y agoI try!
- xjwm 6y agoI just ordered one of these recently! Last week, I finished reading "The Cuckoo's Egg,"[0] about a computer espionage case in the late 1980s (great book, by the way.) Afterwards, I was looking up the author's information, and found the klein bottle website, and videos with Numberphile. Cliff actually sent photos of the klein bottle I ordered as it was being packaged up for shipping! Lots of humorous tidbits hidden all around the website. Worth taking a few minutes to explore around. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg
- themodelplumber 6y agoWasn't that an awesome story? I enjoyed the PBS Nova documentary too, with reenactments starring real people from the story. Btw, if you like interesting people with wide-open minds who also sell stuff from their fun and quirky websites, I can share a few others: http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/ http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/ https://www.denniswoodruffshow.com/ https://www.denniswoodruffshow.com/ https://www.grand-illusions.com/ https://www.grand-illusions.com/
- edanm 6y agoAnd as a great HN tie-in, The Cuckoo's Egg actually mentions Paul Graham and Robert Morris, two of YC's founders, in its last chapters.
- turdnagel 6y agoWonderful low tech website, wonderful business and idea, wonderful sense of humor. Very tempted to order.
- notdang 6y agoJust buy one. I guarantee you that it will be the most delightful online purchase ever (and if not, I'll reimburse you, just send a piece of glass from the bottle). After I bought it, I kept everything, even the packaging.
- psanford 6y agoI bought one of these the last time this was on HN. If you are on the fence about buying one I would recommend doing it for the following reasons: - Klein bottles are cool - Klein bottles are great conversation pieces - Buying things from Cliff is an experience unto itself Seriously, if only all retail experiences were as personalized and enjoyable as buying from ACME Klein Bottle is.
- tomc1985 6y agoThese things must be a bitch to clean
- CliffStoll 6y agoHey - there's only one side to clean.
- 082349872349872 6y agoUnless Stoll upsells an ACME 4th dimensional rotator unit? (Limit 1 per customer. Subject to availability and export controls. ACME regrets to inform its amiable clientele that a recent site visit to our manufacturer for the new Banach-Tarski Playkit has revealed that although the raw spheres have been delivered and are in-process, they are likely to remain on backorder for an unbounded amount of time.)
- CliffStoll 6y agoAt the Joint Math Meeting, I set up a huckster table, selling Klein bottles. I put up a sign, "SPECIAL BANARCH-TARSKI TWO-FOR-ONE SALE". About the only place I could pull off that stunt...
- gotfork 6y agoHi Cliff, I have two of your Klein bottles which I very much enjoy, but recently I've had a hankering for something without quite so many embedded Möbius bands -- have you ever tried to make a glass Boy's surface by any chance?
- CliffStoll 6y agoSmiles back to you, oh creator of forks! I've tried several times to make a Boys Surface. It's really hard to do. Bending tubing around its own radius - really challenging. Easy to kink, difficult to get uniform. I've commissioned my friend Lucas Clarke and he's had encouraging results; alas but I've seen too many shards of 30mm diameter borosilicate tubing. Will keep trying...
- ingenieroariel 6y agoLa olimpiada iberoamericana de matematicas en Caracas en el anio 2000 tenia una botella de Klein como logo. Este post me trajo muy buenos recuerdos.
- grawprog 6y agoThis >(at the moment, this Hacker News squib has resulted in a veritable tsunami of Klein bottle orders -- over a dozen -- and I'm getting kinda backlogged. Looks like I'll be working tonight & tomorrow. And it's my turn to wash the dishes tonight...) This I bought one of these the last time this was on HN. And the joy of reading through this site just suddenly made me yearn for an xkcd style graph showing klein bottle sales over time since last post on hn complete with snappy punchline in hidden text.
- jakebasile 6y agoI'm not a fan of math and barely understand what some of these jokes mean, but this is a truly wonderful site to read through.
- numlocked 6y agoI have a good story about Cliff and his bottles, and what happened when I tried to buy a number of them as engineering awards at my company (which we still do — the quarterly Kleins of Excellence). I’ve posted it before so I’ll just link to my prior comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830277
- Uehreka 6y agoWhat exactly is up with the name “ACME”? I remember as a kid there was an ACME in my town which was one of a chain of grocery stores, but in Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons it was a mail-order company that would send Coyote all kinds of crazy devices (which the real world ACME did not tend to have on hand). Now, as an adult, there’s a Theatre company in my city called ACME and it’s also the name of a standard for requesting SSL certs, and now this guy has a joke about his Klein bottles being made by ACME. So what’s up?
- 082349872349872 6y agoancient greek: ἀκμή
- djur 6y agoIt means "summit, zenith, peak, pinnacle" and has a history of being used as a business name that doesn't convey much more than "the best". It has the advantage of showing up early in alphabetical listings (like phone books) but seeming more sophisticated than, say, "A Plus" or "AAA". So in mid 20th century America, "Acme" would be an obvious choice for a generic company name. According to Chuck Jones, that's why it was used in Looney Tunes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Corporation#Warner_Brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Corporation#Warner_Brothe... Most recent uses of "Acme" are probably influenced by Looney Tunes. ETA: In case it's not clear, it's not an acronym/initialism, although it's sometimes confused with one or given meaning as a bacronym.
- GolDDranks 6y agoThe initialism I've heard is "A Company that Makes Everything". The meaning of "summit, zenith, peak, pinnacle" was new to me. TIL.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_etymology
- 6y ago
- hyperman1 6y agoAbout that lifetime warranty. If I am clinically dead and they shock me back to life, you pay me for 2 klein bottles?
- jeffrallen 6y agoIt is worth it to pick it up in person, Cliff is a hoot.