Cliff, 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!
I 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.
What 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?
This 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!
I 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.
My favorite Cliff Stoll quote:
> customer service is easy when you run a zero volume business
Cliff Stoll is a pretty funny guy. He also wrote a fascinating book about tracking hackers back in the day.
> 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!
> 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.
Cliff 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_JX...
He also has an great warehouse setup in his crawl space.
https://hackaday.com/2015/06/24/crawlspace-warehouse-include...
Really impressive guy.
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.
This reminds me of the old Lindsay Publications reprint of Procedures in Experimental Physics from 1938.
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."
I 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.
Cliff is a funny guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll
I 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!
I have one of these in my living room, it came with a sticker and a nice note, and I highly recommend them.
His website is where I first learned the term "dihydrogen monoxide". https://www.kleinbottle.com/why_acme.htm
I 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.
I 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
I love the design of that site!!
I'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.
La olimpiada iberoamericana de matematicas en Caracas en el anio 2000 tenia una botella de Klein como logo.
Este post me trajo muy buenos recuerdos.
Every product should have a website like this.
About that lifetime warranty. If I am clinically dead and they shock me back to life, you pay me for 2 klein bottles?
Wonderful low tech website, wonderful business and idea, wonderful sense of humor. Very tempted to order.
This
>(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.
It is worth it to pick it up in person, Cliff is a hoot.
These things must be a bitch to clean
I 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.
I 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