Show HN: Kardius – find people like you, near you – made with Rust and Rocket - <AUTHOR> https://www.kardius.com/ <comment><USER2> Congratulations on launching and on the architecture choice and dev insights!

With regards to the product, there are several consequences you are about to see and need prepare to mitigate. I worked on something similar and need to rewrite it, thus the learnings.

1\. The site looks like a dream come true for political recruiters/promoters. You have a place full of users self-identifying with political labels in great detail and you can reach out to anyone. You will see a ton of spam from companies, parties, surveyors, you name it. You may want to throttle it by limiting number of new people that can be reached by a user in 24 hrs.

2\. Scammers or predators could bait people into in-person meetings or worse. All they have to do is mimic the typical profile of their targets. There is no verification of truth in others, but there is a lot of personal exposure of yourself.

3\. It was strange to see people's likes and dislikes as a profile. It gives you a lot to potentially dislike in a person, but nothing really to draw you to them as a person. In a community, the more preferences one lists, the more odds they have of alienating their neighbors, instead of bringing them together. Labels and stereotypes have one thing in common - they pidgeonhole people instead of giving them personality.

You have shown you can execute. The above is just feedback on the inherent intended or unintended consequences behind this new funnel for mixing people. Social products can be quite dangerous but also fun. It's critical to reduce downside risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very good insight and I definitely agree. With regard to your first point, I'll look to add a limit to how many users a person can message per day.

I spent some time already and plan to spend a lot more on moderation tools to mitigate the effects of your second point. Ideally fake profiles can be both reported and detected, but as of yet I have not invested too much time into these efforts, other than adding basic reporting features and a moderation page for those with sufficient power.

I tried to mitigate your third point by only allowing users to see your total cluster vote as opposed to your individual card votes. As a result, there is a bit of plausible deniability as your vote for each card is somewhat masked by the average. This could be furthered by reducing the cluster count and thereby making each cluster larger and mask more individual card votes.

<comment><USER3> > I tried to mitigate your third point by only allowing users to see your > total cluster vote as opposed to your individual card votes

I find these clusters really strange. For example, this cluster:

> War on Drugs, War on Terror, Fossil Fuels, Drone Strikes, Dark Humor, > Military, Police Officers

And

> Yoga, Lower Drinking Age, Gym, Alcohol, TikTok

What does Yoga and Gym have to do with lowering drinking age, or with TikTok? Very weird. So if I create a profile and I am positive towards Yoga and Gym then people are going to think that I want to lower the drinking age? And likewise, they are going to think that just because I support having a military force (which I do), that I also support the war on drugs (which I don't).

Would be better to not do clustering at all than to group a whole lot of unrelated stuff together and give the wrong impression I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, the clustering situation is a bit of a double-edged sword. Here's the pros and cons I've found:

Pros:

1) Allows for instant similarity-searching. I am using the Postgres CUBE data structure to index users' votes and it has a limit of 100 items. So, if I didn't use clusters then there could only be 100 cards maximum, but ideally you would have even less than that because the CUBE can start to slow down when you approach that limit.

2) It's also a bit of a privacy feature as people can only see how you voted along cluster lines, and not how you voted on individual cards. This provides the aforementioned plausible deniability.

Cons:

1) Not all clusters are ideal, as you've seen. I spent a lot of time exploring different clustering algorithms and none of them were perfect. Some cards were naturally a part of multiple clusters and others didn't align to any at all. I'm sure a lot of this comes down to card choice, which I definitely could improve.

2) Can be confusing to users as opposed to just listing theirs and others votes on cards.

\---

If you'd like to help and create better clusters, I'd definitely be open to tweaking them. Most of the required data can be found by navigating to the Cards page. For example, if you go there and click "War on Drugs" and then click "View Correlations", you'll find that "War on Terror" correlates the most with "War on Drugs". This data can then be used to try and create your own clusters. I've found it to be a very tricky puzzle satisfying all the constraints.

In the end, for performance reasons, I felt like I had to choose between either having clusters or only 50-75 cards, and I chose clusters. There's probably a better way of doing it, but I was unable to find it at the time.

<comment><USER4> Have you manually reviewed some of these clusters? Automatic clustering for subjective topics tend get gamed by users (if they can be influenced by users) or labeled incorrectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the first pass for the clustering was SciKit's Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering Function and then the clusters were manually tweaked in an attempt to increase accuracy. Clusters are also manually updated and curated, so hopefully they shouldn't be able to be gamed at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News,

I was looking for a project to learn Rust with and improve my webdev skills, so I came up with the idea of Kardius. After reading The Rust Programming Language I began work on it. I posted it on reddit some months ago and tried to iterate on their feedback, so now hopefully it's ready for the big stage of Hacker News! (still very nervous though)

Basically, I had remembered Paul Graham's advice of "make something that you yourself would want", and I had always wanted a way of finding like-minded people around me. I had the idea for a website / app that let you swipe on concepts instead of people. For example, cards like "Hunting, Vaccines, Cities, Podcasts" would appear, and swiping right on them would mean you liked the idea or identified with the concept, with swiping left indicating the converse.

So, I made just that. It then uses the Manhattan distance formula to compute your similarity to others. You can also view statistics like the average swipe value for a card and how that card correlates with other ones (e.g. Hunting and Guns are highly correlated with each other).

You can then also view clusters of cards on profile pages. These are groups of cards with votes highly correlated with one another (initially found via SciKit's Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering Function). You can then see how users align to these clusters. Another reason for clusters is because I am using the Postgres CUBE data structure to compute similarity between users, and CUBE caps out at 100 elements (and there's currently 250 cards). So to resolve that votes for cards are clustered into, well, clusters, and then the distance between CUBEs can be calculated, and this can all then be indexed for high performance similarity searching.

There is also the Interests page that lets you enter your individual interests. This is because not every interest can be a card as there can only be so many and the ones that do exist should be well-known and relatively controversial to give better predictive power. So, once the base similarity is established via swiping on popular topics, this page lets you tag yourself with whatever you'd like and then also search users and posts for these tags as well. There's also an interface on the Conversations page to easily keeping track of the latest posts for your interests.

In addition, you can privately message users and publicly create posts and tag them with whatever you'd like (examples: Rust, Hiking, etc.). You can also filter users and posts by date, similarity, age, and distance.

My backend dependencies are currently rand, bcrypt, serde, rusoto (for uploading avatars to s3), oauth2, reqwest, time, rocket, tokio, futures, deadpool (database connection pool), web-push, deunicode, async-stream, and pin-project-lite.

For Rocket I am using the async branch (recently merged to master, hooray!) and thus far it's been great. I'm extremely happy with it, both due to its technical merit but also because of the tremendous help the creators provide in terms of technical support. It was my first Rust project so I had a ton of beginner questions along the way and they were always extremely patient and insightful. The rocket server is currently hosted on a free-tier AWS EC2 instance.

For real-time messaging, I ended up creating a Server Sent Events library. It's basically just a channel that the multi-threaded Rocket server sends commands to (join this user to this room, send this message to this user or room, etc.). The library has a bunch of hash tables that keep track of all the rooms, users, and subscriptions. I also recently added support for an event log so users can temporarily disconnect and then receive all the messages they missed upon their return without having to refresh. If there is any demand for this I'd be happy to polish it up a bit and throw it on GitHub, as I'm sure my implementation is far from ideal.

On the frontend I am using React and... that's it actually. It's probably not the wisest decision (although I am kind of afraid of npm) but I ended up just creating minimal libraries for everything I normally would use a dependency for. My simplistic Markdown parser is around 150 lines, my Axios "clone" is just a small 100 line wrapper for fetch, my routing library is just matching the URL against my small list of path regexes and returning the corresponding component to render, etc.

Returning to the website's features themselves, I tried to make as many available as possible without logging in, as I generally dislike logging into sites, so no pressure to create an account at all! What I'd like more than anything is any suggestions or feedback that you might have, because I'm perpetually full of doubt and indecision on the proper course of action to take. Another thing I'm struggling with is marketing and actually getting it out there, as I know nothing of that world, and I always feel kind of weird about self-promotion. Anyways, thanks so much for reading!

<comment><USER5> Congratulations for your release!

The Kardius logo on the top left is very pixelated both on my phone and on my browser. Considering that the icons on the right are not pixelated I think this was not a conscious design choice.

Sorry for kibitzing, but I think this will impact people's first impression about your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just uploaded a new logo with twice the resolution. Did that help?

<comment><USER5> It looks good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A bit confusing.

If I vote for something, does that mean I

\- 1. believe that thing is good/exists etc

\- or 2. that I'd like to talk with people who are interested in this

Stupid example: a vegetarian might very well hold the position that raising animals for meat is bad while still be interested in discussing it.

<comment><USER6> OK, I have tested a bit more. This is _really_ interesting I took the time to answer all the question it asked me, and here is some more feedback:

\- This thing needs anonymous sign up.[0]

\- And a delete option.

\- Also people needs to be _nudged_ towards using partial names or pseudonyms and _not_ full real names.

\- You also probably understand this already, but you are now sitting on a heap of personal data already. This is really, really, _really_ cool but also has the possibility to blow up relationships, families and generally create havoc. Lives have probably been lost over less than what is available here.

\- answering all the questions was tedious.

\- I want a clear way to vote "whatever" or "prefer not to answer"

\- idea: Limit others view of your profile to what you are comfortable to share, like the facts that I: like card games, board games, CSGO, climbing. Leave out that I dislike Trump, liked Obama, still support the 2nd amendment, support decriminalization of marijuana etc etc.

\- crazy idea: create linkable public profile with the things I want to share (like above) so I can link to it from my profile here for example.

[0]:You then probably need another way to reduce scammers/spmmers ability to create multiple customized accounts to target/befriend people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems pretty cool, although who is it for?

I have tried out several of these services before in a way to finding new friends but 99% of them is filled with people that actually are more interested in finding a date instead of a mate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, that is a very good point. That reason is why I neglected to add a gender option, as I felt the inclusion of that filtering criteria would steer the culture towards that of a dating site.

As for its reason for being, it's mostly because I just think it's a bit of a shame how there could be this awesome person down the street or in my city, and I could live my whole life without finding that out. I was hoping to develop a service that might alleviate that.

For example, if you were into some obscure Steam game, you could specify that as an interest and potentially see that someone else near you also shares that interest as well. You then might message them, play together, and then if you hit it off some time down the line you could eventually meet in real life as well.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but in order for your project to be successful in that way it would have to mean that _a lot_ of people need to sign up.

I live in a rural area in northen europe, they chances of this site becoming big enough for it to be interesting for me are very slim. Of course I could find internet friends through it, but that's not what the site claims to aim to solve for me.

I don't want to be negative, but I think the most common first question will be what gender people are since that info is missing. People will just go around whatever obstacles exist in order to date if that's what they want. I would suggest instead of having a separate dating section so those people will fill up there instead.

Dating and sex also sells and could help the signups along the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried it out, and immediately regretted it! I didn't come up with any matches, and then realized I provide a lot of personal details, and got nothing in return. I can't find any information requesting how to delete my data, though.

I like the idea, but would really appreciate some information on how to get my data deleted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, a lot of people have been requesting this. In the interim you can go to the Cards page and click on cards and change your votes there to baseline. This has been a heavily requested feature though and I'll be adding the ability to reset your votes and delete your account this week.

<comment><USER8> alright, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be added now if you refresh your profile page and click "Account Settings" there. I've added a feature for resetting all your votes and deleting your entire account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The website is nice and easy to use and the concept is fun. I love hierarchical clustering so the technology also appeals to me. But I was very disappointed by the nature of the cards, I expected hobbies or personality based card whereas almost all those I got were about political issues. Who chooses their friends based on their opinion of Brexit? That seems very unhealthy. Maybe I was unlucky.

Another thing is that even for non-political topics. The clusters that are drawn end up being political. You like anime? -> Libertaniarism cluster. You like research? -> Free speech cluster. If you dislike Libertaniarism suddenly you no longer match up with people who like Anime. That's the danger of unsupervised learning, it might be interesting to impose some constraints on it so that you can control which topics get compared together.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually something that I'm still trying to figure out, and hopefully can be improved in the future. Maybe you can help me out:

So, the problem we'd like to solve is what set of 250 or so cards has the highest predictive value in that similar answers lead to the best interpersonal matches?

The problem with hobbies is that there are so many of them and not many people feel very strongly one way or the other about many of them. You probably wouldn't not give someone a chance just because they prefer ping pong to pool, for example. Rather, I was looking for what might be deal-breakers.

The Interests page and tagging in general is what I am hoping will fill that need of specifying your individual interests and matching based on them. Here is where you can tag yourself with whatever you'd like and then search for users and posts based on these tags. The card swiping's function is mostly just a first-pass elimination filter.

I had the thought of perhaps doing categories instead with regard to cards. For example, sense of humor is often very important in people. Perhaps 50 of the cards should be memes? And then perhaps 50 of the cards be political, 50 of the cards be hobbies, etc.? Or perhaps there could be multiple similarity percentages, each of a different category? It's still very experimental and I'm not sure what the correct path is.

<comment><USER10> > So, the problem we'd like to solve is what set of 250 or so cards has the > highest predictive value in that similar answers lead to the best > interpersonal matches?

I think ideally you should somehow allow users indicate what kind of "interpersonal" similarity they are looking for. Perhaps right now I want to find intellectually similar people -- but maybe later I want to find people with the same sense of humor. Hell, maybe I just want to find people interested in eating the same food.

Here's an abstraction that I think could be a killer feature, and could solve a lot of "problems" around matching, privacy, etc: Cardsets.

A cardset would be a set of cards with its own theme. My answers to the cardsets can be hidden/shown at will. I can view similar users based on responses to a single cardset, and my "overall matches" would be a weighted similarity across all cardsets, where I can toggle how important each cardset is.

So now imagine the following cardsets:

      - Politics.  Swipe left for "bad idea", right for "good idea".
      - Humor.  Swipe left for "not funny", right for "funny".
      - Food.  Swipe left for "disgusting", right for "delicious".
      - Aesthetics.  Swipe left for "ugly", right for "beautiful".
      - Hobbies.
      - Activities I want to try.
      - Places I want to go.
      - Fashion, technology, programming, ...etc...

I can now find people that have similar fashion taste to me. Or that want to travel to the same places as me. Or that like the same food as me. There's also the nice side effect that I don't have to swipe on cardsets I don't care about, and that there's _a lot_ of swiping I could do, which is potentially fun. Sky's the limit here!

Furthermore, if you want to get "advanced", add a way for me to find "custom matches", by which I weigh the importance of each cardset. Perhaps I want to find people that match based on "Politics" and "Humor" ... so I'd set those as having high weight and the others lower.

 _You_ now have a channel by which you can add endless amounts of content, and can iteratively improve your matching and engagement. Adding a new cardset opens up an entirely new set of matches to all of your users, and gives them something to swipe.

I think this concept is extremely powerful and valuable, and opens up endless avenues for future growth. Imagine brands being able to fill out cardsets for "aesthetics", or "food", etc. Now you can match users to brands they care about.

Lastly, to light a fire under your ass, if you don't commit to doing this, I will. The more I think about it, the more I think this is something that could catch on, especially if you let users create cardsets and add other viral features (eg: ability to send a link to someone to fill out a cardset to find out how much they match me).

<comment><AUTHOR> Another fantastic reply! I really need to get this to take off already so I can hire you before you make your own and out-compete me.

The more I read this reply, the more I agree with it, and I think it may actually not be that difficult of a change. Card sets could be integrated into the existing cluster concept and I could just give users the ability to choose which sets (clusters) they swipe on and the weighting that they apply to each. They could also decide which clusters should be factored into their similarity matching. I _think_ this will all work with the existing CUBE concept, which is exciting, because many other proposed solutions by others didn't fit nicely within that mathematical structure.

You've honestly given me a lot to think about and I think I see a better way forward now. Your insight really increased my mood because I think you've discovered something very important that I am likely going to be spending quite a bit of time on in the next coming weeks and months.

Thanks so much!

<comment><USER10> I would advise against folding it into clusters, and instead have each cardset be its own thing. What you have right now is a cardset that I'd label "General" \-- abstract the backend so you can create different sets of cards ("Food", "Fashion", etc). If manually curate cardsets, you won't even need to worry about clustering. Yes, it's a shame you spent time on it, but no clustering will ever beat manually creating sets of cards.

In terms of producing a "total match score" with a user, you compute a match score for each cardset that both users have, then use a simple normalized linear combination to get the total.

If users A and B have cardsets X Y and Z in common, you would produce similarity scores "S" for S(A,B,X), S(A,B,Y), and S(A,B,Z). Then, you use the weights that user A selects for each cardset (W(A), W(B), W(C)), normalize such that they add up to 1 but maintain their ratios, and compute total similarity of A matched to B as: W(A) * S(A) + W(B) * S(B) + W(C) * S(C).

As long as you have pre-computed the scores between all user-cardset pairs (your scaling pain point), computing match scores even with weights is trivial and fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This needs an option to allow users to delete their own account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, a few people joined the discord and asked for this as well. I'm going to try to have it added by the end of the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations!

To be honest, what I am most interested in, is how you got the people to actually care. So what exactly did you do for marketing? Did it just work, or how exactly did you achieve initial traction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, this is actually still an open question. My marketing thus far has been exclusively just posting it on a couple subreddits and this Hacker News thread. I don't think I've yet achieved traction because there aren't enough users to sustain interest so most people get bored pretty quickly and log off, but I'm working on it! If I figure this out I'll let you know though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I spent 20 minutes swiping on topics I don't care about. There were only 5-10 cards that I really cared about and they are being drowned out by stupid Brexit cards in the similarity score.

</comment><comment><USER14> i could see a closed version site like this being useful for reigonal or comminity development projects, as a supliment to the "find out what everybody wants to do" workshop phase.

</comment><comment><USER15> This website has a bug in the chat where if I type too much text and it goes out of the box, the entire webpage goes blank and the page throws a react error. lmao

<comment><USER16> Can you replicate this? This isn't happening for me on the latest Firefox. What browser and operating system are you using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in the process of learning rust and rocket. Is there any auth library that you used, or implemented it yourself?

Also, how long have you been working on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I think you'll really enjoy it.

For authenticating with Google and Facebook I used the oauth2 crate.

For logging in in general I used private encrypted cookies as described on this page: [https://api.rocket.rs/v0.4/rocket/http/enum.Cookies.html](https://api.rocket.rs/v0.4/rocket/http/enum.Cookies.html)

I used a Request Guard that decrypts this cookie into the corresponding user identifier. Here's a link to that page: [https://api.rocket.rs/v0.4/rocket/request/trait.FromRequest....](https://api.rocket.rs/v0.4/rocket/request/trait.FromRequest.html)

I've been working on this for a little over a year now, off and on.

Let me know if would like me to expand on any of these points.

</comment></comment><comment> non-entity Interesting concept, this has probably been one of the more difficult problems in my life.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found another HN user in Dublin - so it works I guess

<comment><USER16> I think it works for more than that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can't seem to login via FB, getting 404.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed now hopefully!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did you hit any bug/limitation with rocket and other libs (diesel?)?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the beginning it was a bit tricky because the migration to async was happening within the Rust community, so that caused some code churn early on. Lately though it's been smooth sailing.

I'm using tokio-postgres for my database library and both it and Rocket are async, so they synchronize very well together. I do not believe Diesel is currently async, but in either case I'm using tokio-postgres instead so I haven't had to look into how to integrate Diesel with Rocket.

Other than that, my needs were pretty simple and I used well-supported platforms, so I haven't really run into any major issues yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Firstly, congrats on the launch. Designing and implementing a new concept from scratch, by yourself, is definitely fraught with difficulties. It's hard to know if what you're designing is "right" and if you're implementing "the right way". Sticking with it for an entire year and actually launching is definitely something you should feel good about.

I think this is a great idea, and for a first version the execution is actually quite good. Once I figured it out, I enjoyed using it and flew through all of the cards. I looked at a lot of matches and even sent a few messages. Overall, I can see myself coming back for random chats from time to time.

Here is my feedback, in order of what I perceive to be most important.

1\. It was not at all obvious to me how to swipe. I tried swiping the card but it didn't move. So I clicked the arrows. Since I "agreed" with the first 4 or so cards, I did not realize the arrows were to go back and forth. (In fact, I would not have ever expected back and forward to be an option). Then I realized that the "help button" thing was actually how to slide, and I got it from there.

I suggest you make the slider thing look "slideable" and obvious that left is disagree (red), right is agree (green). Right now, it definitely is easy to see it as a "help" button.

I also suggest you make the card navigation arrows not ambiguous -- I think it is fair to say people will assume they mean "agree" and "disagree" rather than "next" and "prev". Either provide context so that it's obvious what they do, or use words "next", "prev".

Here is a crappy mock-up that hopefully shows what I mean: [https://jsbin.com/wekuzebasu/](https://jsbin.com/wekuzebasu/) \- In this shows progress and is obvious what next/prev do, and (for me at least) it is much more obvious what the call to action is, and how to operate it. (You could replace "|||" with "<->", or show arrows next to the slider circle for even more emphasis).

2\. I really love the "percent" agree/disagree. I think that's way better than just "yes/no" and it greatly increases my confidence that I'll get better results.

3\. I think your initial card set is actually quite good. There are a few where it is ambiguous of "left" and "right" mean. Agree / Disagree?Like / Dislike? Support / Don't support? Care / Don't care?

4\. If I were you, it would be very easy for me to worry about spam/abuse/gaming of this. But, honestly, your biggest problem will be overcoming the network effect to get a critical mass of users to make this better. If for an average user there are more similar people, and they are closer, it becomes much more compelling for more users to join -- leading a virtuous cycle. If you want this to catch on, your #1 concern should be getting the most users in the least amount of time.

Handling spam/abuse is a problem you _want_ to have, and I'd put it off until it's necessary and/or until it's clear it is slowing user growth.

5\. I've read all of your comments, and I think you're making some very good decisions and are putting a lot of thought into this. I hope you stick with it.

6\. The clustering is good and does provide some level of "privacy" \-- though for my "similar" people I often do not see any clusters at all. Anyway, this seems like the type of app where I _want_ people to know my opinion on stuff, and if there's a question for which I want my opinion to be unknown, I'll just skip it.

\-----

Now a question regarding the matching. Is there a difference between "unanswered", "skipped", "0% (as opposed to -X% or +X%)" ? Consider these cases:

1) I don't care about a card. This is distinct from being "0%" \-- I don't want this card counted towards producing my matches. If someone is 100% or -100% on it, don't penalize the similarity.

2) I am neutral about a card, but I _do_ care if somebody is +/\- on it. _Do_ consider this in similarity.

3) I have not answered a card. This should not count towards similarity.

4) I previously had an opinion on a card, but now I don't care. How do I "reset" it?

Depending on how this is handled, you'll need to change the UI to make it more clear. Eg, you may need a "skip" button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, this is an incredible reply. Thanks so much for such an in-depth analysis and compliments!

I actually really like your mock-up and really appreciate that you took the time to make it. Hopefully you don't mind if I take quite a bit of inspiration from it, because I definitely think it looks much better than my current one.

Yeah, I agree that the network effect is one of the biggest problems. Retention seems very tricky with a concept like this because while posting it to reddit or HN can result in many registrations, few people stick around because there isn't much to do on the site because there's so few users at the moment. It honestly does make motivation pretty difficult, but I am indeed going to stick with it regardless.

With regard to your last 4 numbered points, currently 0% == not answered == neutral, and this is mostly due to technical limitations. Your default similarity cube is just (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, ..., 0.0) (50 zeroes), and voting on cards adjusts this accordingly. Such that if you answer 100% to every card in the first cluster and answer no other cards then your CUBE would look like (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, ..., 0.0)

I was thinking about a potential way to solve this, but as of right now due to the constraints of CUBE similarity matching, this is the current solution.

Thanks again for such an insightful reply!

<comment><USER10> Feel free to use it however you want :)

Regarding the 0.0/default/skipped -- see my other response about "cardsets", which the more I think about it, the more I am convinced will solve nearly all of your issues:

      - you don't have to worry about the skipped vs neutral problem (as it is fair to expect a user to answer all cards in a cardset).
      - you don't have to worry about clustering. a cardset is a "cluster".
      - you can work around technical limitations by having each cardset be its own cube
      - you boost retention by being able to have a library of dozens of cardsets (rather than 250 cards).  limitless swiping, and swiping on things that your users will find interesting because they are selecting cardsets that are important to them.
      - you can make your site viral by allowing users to send a link where the receiver can (anonymously) swipe all the cards of a cardset and see their "similarity" to the link sender.  (Then you can ask them to register to be able to send links themselves).
      - futures paths for revenue are endless

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are 100% right here. Wow, thanks so much. This really is amazing. I'm going to begin work on this soon (just need to get some sleep first!)

<comment><USER10> Also there is another aspect to cardsets that might be worth thinking about, which is that they are like "polling" done in a fun and easy way (swiping on pictures) -- the fact that you can also show people that answered similar to me doesn't need to be the focus.

Having polls like this can help you grow the site. For example, imagine I make a cardset for "Beatles albums" where I put in each Beatles album, and shoot the link out to, say, r/Beatles or whatever. Your site can let people swipe, then show the aggregate % for each of the cards, thus ranking them.

Of course... having viewed this really fun and quick poll, random pollers might wish to make their own new polls and spread your site.

Enjoy your sleep.. you have a long journey ahead of you!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? - <AUTHOR> A thread like this was posted 2 years ago. Maybe those problems have been solved or new problems have appeared. So what problem currently exists in your industry that can be taken up by a startup? <comment><USER2> Anyone that can make hiring better would make a fortune. Even if you can make something super specialized like hiring for ai programmers or biochemists would make a fortune.

<comment><USER3> what kind of problems are you facing with hiring?

<comment><USER4> some issues: \- massive information asymmetry b/n company and applicants. \- companies are different. why conform to standard "job types" like "data scientist", "software engineer" etc when a potentially custom tailored description would do a much better job? \- In technical fields the "non- technical recruiter as the gate keeper" model breaks down. \- There are many issues if you really dig in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 3D modeling objects (starting with retail products) for rendering on the web and in AR/VR.

The AR/VR/WebGL world totally depends on 3D content. 99% of the companies who want to put 3D content out, don't have any in 3D or if they do it's inappropriate for the medium - for example they only have 200MB objects used for photorealistic rendering.

Having good lightweight 3D models of objects/products etc... is probably a multi-billion industry itself.

<comment><USER6> I have been trying to get that service off the ground. I got the low cost 3d scanning and rendering down. Just don't have the space or funds to actually build up the library. GetKipple.com

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's going to be done through scanning. You need more variability for texture than can be given through scanning and fixing the textures later is too time intensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See my response here

[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/cba53d636ac477d...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/cba53d636ac477d08f3456d9e3bf9613/raw/bffad0432474fda0d1c07f218987761d17adf559/LIMS%2520Industry)

I should add reasons there is a need for change:

Vendors in the current space are "behind" in terms of technological offering. The APIs provided by vendors are often cludgy to non-existent. The UI for these applications are non-intuitive and usually an afterthought.

The top-tier vendors in this space regularly charge upwards of $5000 or more for a concurrent license

Vendors and their partners regularly charge somewhere between $1400 - $1800 per day for consulting services

Projects for LIMS implementation typically last over 6 months and many last over 1 or 2 years.

Maintenance costs typically are in the %18-20% range.

While those numbers may be typical for enterprise software, the value doesn't warrant it. Product quality is usually poor due to poor product testing. Many of the top-tier vendors have highly-complex solutions that are the result of piling new technology on top of old-messy data models year after year. A new, serious player in this space would have the advantage of starting "from scratch".

There are many benefits and reason as to why we should be seeing innovation, but we just aren't seeing it.

<comment><USER8> This looks a lot like what you're describing, are you familiar with them?

[https://www.coreinformatics.com/lims/](https://www.coreinformatics.com/lims/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> PLC Programming is years behind when it comes to software engineering, developing, testing and speed of deployment.

A system that would allow for Change related Issue-tracking on the CAD-files of the controlled machine. A language that would enforce component-class interfaces, thus preventing information duplication. A proofer that validates the resulting DEAs for correctness.

<comment><USER10> In similar vein a tool that would let you 'play' with hardware functionality/config software without needing to buy it 'simulation on a PC or similar'.

Just having a sane place that list specs for competing products or products that have overlapping functionality would be a help. Sure simple components are standardized by when you start getting to more complex things like protective relays, PLCs, or even breakers it's like companies purposefully fling specs and functionally across 5 sites and 3 PDFs to waste so much time that you don't have time to look at competitors products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Previous discussions :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13139638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13139638)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007)

</comment><comment><USER12> If I consider my industry going to bars to drink then the problem is lines.

In 2017, I shouldn't walk/uber 20min in 20 degree weather to a bar only to find a 30min line which also has a surprise cover charge at the door.

I've thought about this a lot and have some ideas...

<comment><USER13> I would approach this problem by opening a bar, not a startup.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, seems like there's a need for more bars instead of a complicated solution to a simple problem.

<comment><USER4> complicated how? Is it "easier" to open physical bars with usually thin margins and massive capital investment + branding + staffing up + etc...? When all is said and done, a tech solution might be easier/better.

<comment><USER14> A tech solution for what actually? The problem is that there are few (good?) bars in the area. The solution for that problem would be to open new bars.

<comment><USER12> You may disagree but I feel we are in an age of transparency. TripAdvisor, yelp, cargurus, Amazon reviews etc. Consumers want to know as much detail as possible prior to a purchase or visiting a hotel.

My big point is that one of the remaining non transparent industries is nightlife. Bars create fake lines and charge bogus covers.

I just feel like technology could improve this.

<comment><USER13> And they became profitable because they managed to provide a visibility service for millions of local establishments, not a bunch of crooked bars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its not directly the answer of the question but relevant. I believe unaddressed/overlooked problems are the greatest origin of a potential startups but not what we think an legitimate idea, actually is. For the 1st time every idea seems awesome, take time revisit after a few days, you will wonder that most of the sparks are gone by now. If it still looks promising start doing your research. This is another eliminator of an unique idea. Though it doesn't have to be unique. But you should bring your own flavor into it.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the future buildings and factories should be constantly monitored and controlled from the cloud. But most of these assets are currently controlled from on-premise control boxes/computers called BMS systems. If you start a company to integrate the data from these systems (many manufacturers, many formats, many proprietary) and pipe them to the cloud and put a unified control scheme on top, you could potentially do really well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One thing I have noticed is interaction during car servicing. When giving my car in for service, the person in charge at the car company usually has to call me on the phone and tell me to pick up the car. Perhaps this could be automated where the mechanic presses a button on his/her end and the car owner automatically gets a notification (via app?) to pick up the car.

<comment><USER16> This seems like a small feature to add to their invoicing app, not a business.

Also, there's quite a number of car servicing startups now, like YourMechanic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Issuing currency and making laws.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd love to tell you but I'm working on it already.

<comment><USER19> Never be afraid to share your idea with the public. People don't care enough to steal it from you, and those that would steal it wont have the industry knowledge or contacts to launch it successfully.

See my blog post on using strangers to vet ideas: [http://jeremyaboyd.com/validating-your-ideas-on- strangers/](http://jeremyaboyd.com/validating-your-ideas-on-strangers/)

<comment><USER20> > _Never be afraid to share your idea with the public. People don 't care > enough to steal it from you, and those that would steal it wont have the > industry knowledge or contacts to launch it successfully_

...sometimes

[http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/a-24-year-old- made-345000-by-...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/a-24-year-old- made-345000-by-beating-kickstarters-to-market.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Automating retro-sysnthetic analysis using AI.

</comment><comment><USER22> A robot that can hold my baby's bottle.

<comment><USER23> I've been pretty successful using a blanket :).

Nursing pillows are even better, as they give enough space for the laptop to fit :P.

[http://www.toysrus.com/graphics/product_images/pTRU1-2302555...](http://www.toysrus.com/graphics/product_images/pTRU1-23025556enh-z6.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A high end upwork or elance that only has semi vetted developers, e.g those with github commits > 100.

A simpler and cheaper version of meetedgar.com that keeps retweeting my blog posts on auto pilot.

<comment><USER25> What is the pricing at meetedgar.com? And what features they have that are essential and what are disposable?

Their site seems to be purposefully opaque regarding these points.

<comment><USER24> Starts at $50 per month. You need to setup a "library" of blog posts (yours and others) and it will keep retweeting them on autopilot. I want something for $10 per month that simply connects to my blog and retweets posts all day. I'd imagine many bloggers would want it as well.

<comment><USER26> I was thinking about that these days. If I build it, will you be my first customer?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Living with less than 100 things - <AUTHOR> http://sebastian-kuepers.com/blog/2014/12/2/living-with-less-than-100-things

<comment><USER2> TL:DR; He doesn't own less than 100 things and ended up replacing a bunch of stuff anyways, which kind of defeats the purpose of 'Living with 100 things' as being less materialistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> pretty bad summary if you have read the whole article.

the conclusion of the article is, that owning less is never an end to itself, but a means to an end and that I experienced over the last 1,5 years, that actually the biggest benefit for me became to get reminded every day, why I did it in the first place.

I did it to to fully focus on what is important for me.

1\. family 2\. building things myself instead of just owning and collecting them

If you live with 100 or 200 things defeats in no way the purpose of this whole exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> fewer _</comment>


Show HN: New developer tool for the JVM - <AUTHOR> http://www.crudzilla.com

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't mind some more information, either on the startpage or under `About`. Right now I have no idea what I'm downloading, what I can use it for or why I should use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems the home page is quite clear...no?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Founder here.

Will be happy to entertain questions, feedback, suggestions.</comment>


Compressing JPEGs by an average of 22% - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dropbox/lepton <comment><USER2> Current discussion of Lepton: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12094002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12094002)</comment>


Show HN: WhoBuilt.me – A developer's portfolio - <AUTHOR> http://whobuilt.me <comment><AUTHOR> Ever need a portfolio to show potential employers?

This is a good way to keep track of what you worked on and then forget about it until later..

</comment><comment><USER2> Screenshots to see what the result is?</comment>


NIH funding contributed to 210 approved drugs in recent years, study (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/12/nih-funding-drug-development/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" This report shows that NIH funding contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010–2016. Collectively, this research involved >200,000 years of grant funding totaling more than $100 billion. "_ [https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329)</comment>


Altec Lansing's livestreaming DJ headphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/05/altec-lansing-dvr-dj-headphones/ <comment><AUTHOR> interesting idea - also potentially nauseating and/or boring for viewers. Headphones don't spend a tremendous amount of time in the same position during a DJ set - and sitting on the DJ's neck doesn't provide the most inspiring angle.

Still, cool to see someone try to merge the two.</comment>


German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://androidrookies.com/this-german-city-wants-to-ditch-microsoft-for-linux/ <comment><USER2> Iirc, the initiative in Munich was very impressive, with public servants being taught how to file bug reports and whatnot. This is great news imo. Less spending on proprietary software, more accountability, possibly job openings for consultants. Good job Germany! I wish more countries would follow.

<comment><USER3> Many countries are currently ditching Windows in favor of home grown distros due to distrust of Microsoft. Notable examples:

Currently transitioning:

\- Astra Linux (Russia) [https://www.zdnet.com/article/russian-military-moves- closer-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/russian-military-moves-closer-to- replacing-windows-with-astra-linux/)

\- Kylin Linux? (China) [https://www.techradar.com/news/china-to-ditch-all- windows-pc...](https://www.techradar.com/news/china-to-ditch-all-windows-pcs- by-2022-could-this-be-linuxs-time-to-shine)

\- South Korea [https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-koreas-government- explor...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-koreas-government-explores- move-from-windows-to-linux-desktop/)

Already transitioned:

\- Red Star OS (DPRK) [https://www.pcworld.com/article/2862737/meet-red-star- os-the...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2862737/meet-red-star-os-the-north- korean-linux-distro-that-apes-apples-os-x.html)

\- Nova (Cuba) [https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/nova-os-new-release- scre...](https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/nova-os-new-release-screenshots)

<comment><USER4> Is there really a need for them to create their own distributions?

<comment><USER5> No. And it's a shame everyone does.

<comment><USER6> I've been wondering about this. Competition breeds innovation and all that, but in the end, aren't we ending up with a whole lot of repeated effort for little benefit?

<comment><USER7> I guess it's a whole lot easier to repeat the effort (Even if it seems wasteful) than getting multiple countries / governments / languages and funding situations organized around one project.

Probably just easier to do it on your own and if at some point one of the distributions is gaining some momentum maybe then others will adopt it and send patches upstream.

<comment><USER8> Keep in mind that the whole motivation of these is "we don't trust outside group X"; these governments have no reason to believe that OSS isn't compromised, and one of the easiest ways to know everything is to do a lot of the work yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I may very well be part of a minority, but after working with Windows for the last 20 or so years I got used to it's quirks. And yes, I actually like it. Windows 10 on a Dell Latitude or XPS is stable, fast and I can run everything under the sun. Office applications, very domain specific applications like the Adobe suite, uncountable useful utility software, cross platform tools like Gimp, Blender or Krita. And still there are many, many applications I absolutely love which run on Windows only.

The half-baken "Flat UI" trend in Windows or the telemetry does not _really_ concern me. Really, it is no deal for me and my colleagues. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? Oh come on. I'm far more concerned about Microsoft losing against other players. That's the world you should be afraid of.

The best thing about Windows though is Visual Studio. The general consensus is, that it's slow, clunky and hard to use. But actually, that tool is so utterly powerful, streamlined and deep, that every other development environment I every used is missing something of its glory.

And I also love Linux in some ways. I used all different kinds of distributions, either through dual-boot or through Virtualbox, but actually the only thing I really use it for is server-side web-development. And well, what can I say. I love the server side applications. But all those arcane commandline wizardry and the configuration madness still irks me now and then.

But well, to return on topic: It's clear that I mostly work with clients, which mainly use Windows. And there is a lot of software written for Windows environments which can probably never be replaced by other software running on Linux. The thing is, that the push of Microsoft to cross-platform .NET Core or even cross-platform UI (MAUI) opens up those applications to other environments. I'm not fully convinced, yet, but we'll see.

Sorry, for rambling. Just my thoughts.

<comment><USER10> > But all those arcane commandline wizardry and the configuration madness > still irks me now and then

I'll take this over the seemingly endless layers of GUI based configuration screens that Windows servers use. A text based configuration file is much easier to understand, and well, configure, imo.

<comment><USER11> I don't think anyone wants to maintain windows servers. I have probably 5 or so computers at home, counting various NAS'es and raspberries and such. Most are Linux. All that have a screen however, are windows. A server I have to configure. It's doing some kind of job.

My desktop I just want to plug hardware into and see it work, and run proprietary binaries without ever _configuring_ anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Again? I love Germany, but I honestly can't tell whether this is an old news brought back to life, or whether it's a new story at a glance. Deja vu anyone?

<comment><USER13> I believe the root issue here is that Germany has more than one city.

<comment><USER14> This is exactly why Germany will never achieve widespread adoption. All the citizens wish to go and form their own cities, reinventing the wheel and duplicating effort. They should abandon all their smaller cities and focus their resources on a single city.

<comment><USER15> What's the problem with duplicating effort?

<comment><USER16> I read your parent as making fun of the often-used argument against the plethora of Linux distributions.

It's true that entering the Linux world is a bit like entering a shoe shop: why can't they just make two versions, home and professional? ;)

<comment> em-bee we also need summer and winter variants, and outdoor and indoor.

i'd like the summer outdoor casual all natural materials pair please.

<comment><USER16> I should have specified that they only come in one size at _that_ other shop :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Windows, Office and Win Server (AD) make a combo that is quite difficult to replace.

But if these cities are smart, they would pool their resources together to fund common tools. All the bits and pieces are already here. What is needed is a solid package that can be deployed and maintained easily, with user friendly GUI.

<comment><USER18> What is the big deal about AD? A directory of your employees? What's so important about that? (I don't work in corporate IT I genuinely don't know.)

<comment><USER19> AD allows admins to apply policy (settings) to every machine in the organization at once. And to make sure the users don't change them. The policies cover pretty much everything, and can be applied as strictly or loosely as you want. There really isn't an equivalent for Linux. You can set up Linux equivalents for bits and pieces of it, but the all in one solution that you can just drop down on the network and hand over control to some 20 something fresh faced recruit straight out of college who has not been an admin is not there. This is a huge use case for AD.

<comment><USER16> Well, I'm pretty sure there are some lesser known solutions out there. I've just learned about `guix deploy` for instance, which could make such a thing doable, and might be even easier to maintain in the long run. No pretty GUIs for now, though, and it configuring a setup seems to require at least a good understanding of guix/scheme.

Give it a bit more adoption, though, with more examples, snippets and tools, and that specific solution could do wonders. This is often a problem in the Open-Source world: little manpower, so works progresses slowly.

I'm pretty sure there are more (or less) obscure solutions.

[https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking- guix...](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- deploy.html) [https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/towards-guix-for- devops/](https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/towards-guix-for-devops/)

<comment><USER19> This is an example of a tool that solves only a slice of the problem and requires a wizard to operate it.

Plus, it doesn't seem well suited to changing configuration on already deployed machines. If corporate comes and tells you all users must have their machines configured to automatically lock the screen after 5 minutes idle and enable some password requirements this tool would struggle.

<comment><USER16> I'm not really sure why the tool would struggle, it seems like it was made for that use-case: running the command will ssh into each of the listed existing machines, perform some basic sanity checks, upload the new configuration (and packages in case of a system update), and finally atomically update the symlink, thus applying the new policy.

I'll grant you that it seems to require a wizard to operate, or at least write a tutorial and investigate that use-case, but so does most software: I would be clueless in a AD environment, and it would take me a few hours to catch up on some basic concepts.

Now, it hasn't been designed with your specific example in mind (it could have been), so some wizard would most likely need to expose these knobs (lockscreen timeout, password policy)as easily accessible config items.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> IIRC, the initial Munich Linux Project ("Limux") from 2004 I think was somewhat of a failure. They spent millions migrating dozens of different Windows applications, but found that certain offices (e.g. the land registry) kept using Windows applications for obscure hard-to-replace services and databases, leading to friction.

Later they rolled back then entire migration just to re-announce a new Linux migration more recently, see [https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows- why-munich-i...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich- is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/)

<comment><USER21> It failed in huge part due to Microsoft's dirty tactics:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/737818/](https://lwn.net/Articles/737818/)

<comment><USER22> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661372)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From 2009:

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/03/frenc...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/)

My favorite quote:

"Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority." \-- Lt. Col. Guimard

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Timeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Timeline) has the timeline of back and forth between Microsoft and Linux

<comment><USER6> September 2016 - Microsoft moves its German headquarters to Munich[36]

February 2017 - Politicians discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client.[37]

October 2017 - Once seen as a stalwart supporter of open source, the city council last week said that running a Linux-based operating system on its PCs would not be cost efficient in the long run.[38]

November 2017 - The city council decided that LiMux will be replaced by a Windows-based infrastructure by the end of 2020. The costs for the migration are estimated to be around 90 million Euros.[39]

May 2020 - Newly elected politicians in Munich take a U-turn and implement a plan to go back to the original plan of migrating to LiMux.[40]

<comment><USER25> And that's pretty much the reason anything is not fixed/properly built in government software or anything really, every 4 years scrap everything and start from scratch is not sustainable

<comment><USER26> I guess the sad thing is that it really is sustainable, since taxpayers won't stop paying taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The two parties forming the government of Hamburg made an agreement. Its here: [https://www.spd-hamburg.de/fileadmin- hamburg/user_upload/Koa...](https://www.spd-hamburg.de/fileadmin- hamburg/user_upload/Koalitionsvertrag2020.pdf) The relevant section is on page 161. Most relevant is: \- base new software project on open protocols \- "Design award procedures in such a way that we maintain and expand a broad mix of manufacturers and suppliers - for this purpose, award procedures are designed in such a way that all cooperation and business models (e.g. provider communities of startups, open source offers and license models) be treated equally." \- "In the new parliamentary term, the Hamburg citizenship has decided to introduce a cloud-based system - Phoenix - based on the model of Schleswig-Holstein via Dataport for all members of the parliament and employees."

Dataport is a sort of state owned software company for Hamburg and some other northern states. This appears to be the product: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpl0Xds1NMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpl0Xds1NMU)

I couldn't find any open repos on the dataport website. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. But that doesn't look like the big Open Source revolution to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> Much more important: Schools are moving to Office 365 in a rush in face of Covid-19. There are data protection concerns but a crisis can shift priorities so it seems.

<comment><USER29> Right now we need an opensource teleconferencing system much more than an opensource OS.

Edit: I think people recommending jitsi below misunderstood my comment

<comment><USER30> Maybe BigBueButton, then?

[https://bigbluebutton.org/](https://bigbluebutton.org/)

<comment><USER26> My university is using BBB for its only lectures, and it has been great so far (~2 months). I think it also is a self hosted solution, which is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Each few years I see such post. Ditching one or another user facing OS in relatively large and non-homogenous environment ends up as consultant feast without significant impact. Problem is that that there are almost zero alternatives to MS in client computing as platform, what works relatively out of box. I dont speak about one piece, like Desktop os, but all togehther. Ofc you can try glue together, but its jaegernautic task. Most likely you will fail badly, because developing vertically integrated ecosystem of IT products is hard. Even MS does on each 2nd iteration well. All talks about cost savings are always non-sense, when you are serious customer even MS starts hearing you. Ofc if you are all in oficey stuff, then of course your bargaining power is almost zero. But if you try to use open standards and web based systems, then you have got some leverage. Same is true about multicloud, it should be used when bargaining with your cloud provider and you say: you know we can leave in next 2(actually 200) months

<comment><USER31> And even countries like Russia have got problems ditching MS. Their encryption software works much better on win, then linux

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does Desktop OS matter anymore? So much is running in "browsers" now, even the SpaceX astronaut controls were Electron.

The cloud provider is where it's at. AWS, Azure, GCloud ... and nothing from Europe.

<comment><USER33> Yes, it does. I don't want to have city documents in some cloud.

<comment><USER34> Why not? Seems unreasonable to expect that every city can manage their own secure data store...

<comment><USER33> Because very likely that would be another US company again. The whole point is to become less reliant on US companies.

<comment><USER35> There are German cloud providers (DT, 1&1, Hetzner, Exoscale are the best known)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SkoleLinux needs an honourable mention.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolelinux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skolelinux)

<comment><USER6> > The Skolelinux project was started on July 2, 2001. Twenty-five computer > programmers and translators agreed to improve the use of software in > education. They disliked that the next generation of computer users were not > able to have access to source code, arguing that children who are interested > should be able to learn from expert programmers to create their own > software.

> A total of 214 schools using Skolelinux are currently listed on the > DebianEdu Wiki. This case study[1] of implementing Skolelinux at a school in > Greece is typical of user experiences.

[1] [https://schoolforge.net/education-case-study/skolelinux- thin...](https://schoolforge.net/education-case-study/skolelinux-thin-client- solution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Didn't they try this already?

[https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source- expe...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-experiment- things-not-going-plan)

[https://betanews.com/2012/12/11/one-german-city-drops- openof...](https://betanews.com/2012/12/11/one-german-city-drops-openoffice- for-ms-office-why-open-source-still-fails-to-impress/)

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google- amp...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google- amp/article/end-of-an-open-source-era-linux-pioneer-munich-confirms-switch-to- windows-10/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Vee vill succeed 'coz vee häff [https://www.dataport.de/who-we- are/](https://www.dataport.de/who-we-are/)

 _Hugh!_

edit: Especially [https://www.dataport.de/was-wir-bewegen/portfolio/projekt- ph...](https://www.dataport.de/was-wir-bewegen/portfolio/projekt-phoenix/)

disclaimer: No affiliation apart from being resident of said town. [https://www.hamburg.com/residents/about/11853222/government/](https://www.hamburg.com/residents/about/11853222/government/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Although isn't the OS kind of an afterthought now that everything is moving into web applications? I mean, what does it matter what desktopOS you're using if all your software is Office360 or Google Apps?

</comment><comment><USER39> Munich migrated already once to Linux and then had to go back to Windows[1]

They are probably doing to put pressure on Microsoft license fees..

[1] [https://www.golem.de/news/von-microsoft-zu-linux-und- zurueck...](https://www.golem.de/news/von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck-es- gab-bei-limux-keine-unloesbaren-probleme-1911-144917.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> I think that the greatest barrier to the adoption of OSS in administrative circles are pivot tables. Once there's a strong open-sourced alternative in this matter, or administrative folks learn to use databases, then the transition will be much easier - we are almost there because many services are web-centric and platform-agnostic already.

</comment><comment><USER41> One of the major reasons organisations go with Microsoft is the support they provide, although user's familiarity certainly plays another role as well

How does that work out in situations where Linux is adapted? Do they pickup a distro which provides support?

</comment><comment><USER42> It's much easier to do now that pretty much everything has moved to the web.

It's actually impressive that Microsoft has been able to pivot to such an extent that this news doesn't sound the death knell.

</comment><comment><USER43> Makes you wonder if Microsoft had conducted them selves better with Windows 10, then they might not have been looking at doing this. Windows 10 has been a total mess.

<comment><USER44> source?

<comment><USER43> erm any IT professional that has had to deploy windows 10 using MDT or SCCM? The never ending new versions of Windows 10 that need to be deployed. Windows 10 should have been the LTSC version right out of the gate. None of that chaffy Microsoft Store they are back peddling on. And all the other issues that have came along since the OS release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "and better local control over the code powering the whole thing"

I am finding it hard to think the city would have engineers releasing their own Kernel.

<comment><USER45> Not sure why the downvites, but do cities really want to invest in software engineers with enough background to analyze software patches, compile and deploy them vs regular IT technicians who can do the same job at fraction of the effort/salary and be replaced far more easily ?

I am genuinely curious why would someone think that's an advantage. Please give some explanation atleast after the downvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Software is culture, and when you move users from a middle-manager and bureaucracy-centric platform like Windows to a problem-solving power-tools platform like a Linux, it's going to change the culture of the organization. For the better I think, but the people this disadvantages will dig in hard.

<comment><USER47> You're right, Linux is a problem-solving power-tool. X11 breaks, you now have a problem to solve. Your hardware will only work with a proprietary driver that breaks on every kernel update--that's another problem to solve. What it means to use Linux is to become really good at solving problems.

<comment><USER46> Since I've been downvoted, I will clarify. MSFT discourages competence in users and is a workflow manufacturer for assembly lines. Its user interfaces are designed to inculcate learned helplessness in their users. That company will be remembered as the prime architect of an intellectual dark age. Its business model is parasitic, its products are managerialism made real, and it mainly facilitates business anti-patterns that bring suffering to millions of people whose jobs depend on navigating them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I can't believe that Microsoft is still charging for Windows licenses... convoluted licensing is in fact is one of the primary reasons that I've moved away from Microsoft products and services.

<comment><USER49> For individual users who don't mind a small watermark on the screen ,the inability to change their desktop background, or the inability to join the windows insider program, it effectively is free. Granted, this doesn't apply to orgs.

But yeah I don't see why they still charge for Home Edition licences. Surely the focus should be on keeping people using Windows. It probably makes sense in the short term to charge but more and more people are either moving away from Windows or using unlicensed installs.

<comment><USER50> > Surely the focus should be on keeping people using Windows

My impression from years of working with Windows 10 is that large parts of Microsoft actually would prefer that people stop using Windows. Windows is a _personal computer_ operating system, which means that the user is in control of it, and the modern tech world abhors that notion. Case in point: they spent _years_ trying to force updates with no user input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Linux is a nightmare to maintain as an IT department for end users, especially with hardware incompatibility problems and software availability. This is clearly an unsubstantiated article based in speculation.

<comment><USER52> Want data behind that statement. From what I've seen it is the other way around.

Though I do not have significant data myself.

I did a transition for a company back around 2003. Total cost of transition was a net saving already in the first year. Including training, my work, minor new hardware, etc. A couple of their guys learned the systems maintenance enough to take over my work, so I made myself redundant. Just like it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Meanwhile in Munch...

"German city of Munich, famous for rejecting Windows in favour of using Linux on its PCs, will return to Windows after the move won the backing of the full council."

Source: [https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open- source-e...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open-source-era- linux-pioneer-munich-confirms-switch-to-windows-10/)

<comment><USER54> According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux) the politicians decided last month to go back to Linux.

Apparently Ballmer visited Munich a lot trying to persuade the politicians to stay/switch back to Windows, even moving Microsoft's German HQ to the city.

<comment><USER55> I think the timeline entry in Wikipedia is misleading. If you look at the referenced ZDNet article, it has this:

"We're very happy that they're taking on the points in the 'Public Money, Public Code' campaign we started two and a half years ago," Alex Sander, EU public policy manager at the Berlin-based Free Software Foundation Europe, tells ZDNet. But it's also important to note that this is just a statement in a coalition agreement outlining future plans, he says.

"Nothing will change from one day to the next, and we wouldn't expect it to," Sander continued, noting that the city would also be waiting for ongoing software contracts to expire. "But the next time there is a new contract, we believe it should involve free software."

Any such step-by-step transition can be expected to take years. But it is also possible that Munich will be able to move faster than most because they are not starting from zero, Sander noted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The title of this post is all wrong. Microsoft != Windows. Microsoft is so much more. I also like Windows 10, they've done a good job, no more blue screens. Windows Subsystem on Linux is the best thing Windows has done in years and how not to love the new Terminal app. So go Windows! I also love the fact that I can still run an unmodified Windows app that I wrote back in 1996. Try doing that on any other platform!</comment>


Faster and more flexible pipelines with a Directed Acyclic Graph - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/12/directed-acyclic-graph/ <comment><USER2> This is funny to me since essentially all build/test/etc systems in the past 40+ years have been based around a DAG model.

They are rediscovering the basic features of Make et al.

<comment><USER3> The fact that everyone goes out of their way to reinvent this really goes to show how awful the Make experience is.

<comment><USER4> I have a pretty awesome experience with make. If you use it for what it's designed for i.e. building files from a graph of dependencies, it's pretty handy. I use for auto-generated code, binary code as well as tasks that depend on other tasks, such as logging into system A requires getting this key from AWS etc. Most people have bash shortcuts for simple scripts to automate things, I instead write Makefiles, since it seems closer to my mental model, you want to do X but doing X depends on resources Y Z T, make figures out the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't read too deeply, but I'm glad to see all these sorts of systems slowly converge on a sane model.

The part that saddens me is that they all end up looking like a glorified distributed make.

<comment><USER6> The problem of DAG is solved by make very well. So well that it is why people insist on using it. In theory they would have made a good choice.

The issue is that "make" made sure to put enough traps so that people with less knowledge of the pitfalls tend to fall through. How many times I have seen recursive make calls without the $(MAKE) variable lead to funny races or lost compilation flags? How many paralelizable targets running in single thread because somebody did not understand some strange out of order execution(due to wrong Dependency mapping)? How many programs which are only partially built? How many projects were not actually built for huge periods of time because somebody forgot to put PHONY target? How many Frankenstein build systems exist which create Meta languages around make(kbuild) ? My latest adventure was a dormant fork bomb for 4 years in a daily updated project in the clean target! Whole development server farms being resource starved because the clean target started being executed as part of the normal build. How did the fork bomb happen? The usual recursive make.

Make is perfect actually,but we are not perfect in its usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My problems with this feature:

\- You can't have a DAG of stages. Sometimes, especially with a monorepo which this touts, the maintenance of the "needs" becomes burdensome and you want to just block on a stage rather than explicitly named jobs

\- The visualization of this is subpar.

So far my favorite implementation of this feature is Azure Pipelines. No idea if its coped into Github Actions yet or not (haven't switched over). I hate that is the case because of my underlying caution about Microsoft after the 90s and early 2000s though supposedly they are better now.

<comment><USER8> Can't you do something like:

        -Stage1 needs A, B, C
        -D needs Stage1

<comment><USER7> Basically faking a stage by making a job?

That helps but the "definition" of a stage is still far away from the job definition when you have enough of them and people won't know to update this when they copy/paste a job definition for adding a new test.

Plus, visualization is still terrible :)

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree. Just trying to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, just like Concourse, Drone and any other modern CI system. About time.

<comment><USER10> Yeah so I just want to point out that most other CI systems are harder to understand, less documented, harder to bring your own hardware to bear on, and do less for the general software community than GitLab does.

I've used CircleCI, Travis, Drone (I don't think I've used Concourse actually) -- and I _by far_ prefer GitLab CI, it is more featureful _and_ more easy to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This feature is currently broken. It can let deploys run without builds/tests passing.

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/31526](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/31526)

<comment><USER12> Hi! GitLab Community Advocate here: I noticed the issue you linked is closed. I believe the conversation is continued here: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/213080](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/213080)

Hope that is helpful. If so, feel free to add a comment so the team can see.

<comment><USER11> Due to that issue being closed maintainers assumed it was fixed and went around closing related issues without testing if the problems were fixed.

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/issues/198570#note_2936...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/issues/198570#note_293646250)

I have had a really negative experience reporting bugs to GitLab in the last 12 months. I have spent tons of time investigating bugs in new features only to have the devs ignore it. It feels like they are sweeping things under the rug so they can hit deadlines for officially announcing new features.

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/39534#note_283...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/39534#note_283794210)

<comment><USER13> Hello Jared!

GitLab Senior Backend Engineer - Verify (CI) here - Thanks for reaching out! I'll try to explain current situation of these issues.

1\. [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/198570](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/198570)

We know that this bug with DAG/needs is quite annoying. That's why we've been actively discussing about this bug in other issue: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/213080](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/213080)

Can you please take a look at the discussions there?

2\. [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/39534](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/issues/39534)

Unfortunately we had no choice but to give an option to fix this behavior, instead of fixing it. That's because, if we fixed this bug immediately, it would probably break existing pipelines.

That's why we allowed users to fix this behavior themselves ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/24605](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/24605)).

Hope this is helpful and please feel free to contact us if you have any questions/feedbacks. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> These two issues illustrate that GitLab has a quality control problem. If devs aren't dog fooding these features, the community should be given more time to beta test them before the APIs are declared stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm confused, a DAG is a model for the relationships between data. What makes this a separate feature for the product? And it's pretty fundamental to the problem you try to solve, usually, so what were they using before, a list? Tree?

<comment><USER15> Which part of the explanation of what they mean in the article is unclear?

<comment><USER16> They're sort of coopting the name of a datastructure and using it as if it were a product name which is a bit weird

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds good. My guess as to why this has been late coming is because git monorepos aren't that popular. The seem to be growing in popularity as LFS and submodules stabilize.

Anyone want to share their experience with git and monorepos these days?</comment>


World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/15473-world-bank-insider-blows-whistle-on-corruption-federal-reserve <comment><USER2> Primed by the revelations about the NSA recently, I'm not as hesitant to believe this as I normally would be. Conspiracy theories like this are always easy to laugh at until there's enough proof to tip you off that there's actually something happening. Right now it's just a few whistleblowers, but every story has to start somewhere.

I would say that I am not a believer in a massive conspiracy to control the world's money, except that really, I hope there is. I really hope that a lot of the world's problems are caused by a cartel of a few bad suits. That way when the dust settles, either the world is a better place, or we at least know who led us to this place.

A few things in the article (Oh just go read it, it's not that long) that need some discussion:

> "there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, > she said."

Really? That I'm going to need some proof on.

> "The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, > she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. "

That's Oceans Eleven level stuff. I can just imagine the guards patrolling around empty rooms that they think are full of gold. I'm interested to see the truth level of this statement, but that's a bit too outlandish for now.

I'm glad whistleblowers are stepping forward. In the train stations, there's a motto plastered on every wall - "If you see something, say something". We just need to make sure that runs both ways.

<comment><USER3> >That's Oceans Eleven level stuff. I can just imagine the guards patrolling around empty rooms that they think are full of gold. I'm interested to see the truth level of this statement, but that's a bit too outlandish for now.

well, put that way, yeah, I agree. but eh, from what I understand, the standard assaying process is not thorough enough to catch, say, a chunk of tungsten in the gold. So it would kinda surprise me if most of the gold sold at the corner gold and silver shop had the advertised gold content. The government having at least some fake gold? would also be unsurprising. The government intentionally storing fake gold? okay, now we're starting to get into crazy town, but... not impossible crazy.

I mean, I'm not saying the gold in fort knox is fake... but I don't think it's an impossible idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The background is that, like Edward Snowden leaving the NSA, Karen Hudes came from a position of relative comfort and security as Senior Counsel at the World Bank to blow the whistle. She emerged some time ago; this is a new article on her revelations and not strictly speaking breaking news. However, her revelations deserve further consideration and so it's refreshing to see them redistributed in the current climate.

The broader background is that the nature of our fractional reserve system is one of wealth centralization via institutionalized, state-enforced usury, and humans have known about the perils of such schemes (for example, most of the monotheistic religions speak out about the dangers of these systems).

The World Bank and other 'international' institutions have over the last few decades been largely unmasked as surrogate tools of the US State Department, for example through books such as _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_. Having had the chance to personally meet with diplomats who have confirmed details within such sources, and having received shocking responses to some FOIA requests in Europe (), I am in no doubt personally as to the way the wind blows in the global economic system.

IMHO, the challenge that humanity now faces is to adopt fairer and more holistic financial/economic systems that reward social and environmental concern, recognize the interlinked nature of our shared fate, and to transition our current economic systems (in the physical goods/supply chain sense) and our trajectory of technological development toward these new systems without causing sudden breakdowns. Thankfully, most of this should be possible. A critical mass of two things are required: political will and the capacity for disengagement from the sole financial profit motive of corporate and individual actors is what is needed.

</comment><comment><USER5> this belongs in r/conspiracy

<comment><USER6> Does it? Consider the LIBOR scandal:

[http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/libor- scandal](http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/libor-scandal)

Criminal collusion doesn't necessarily emanate from smokey back room deals struck by hooded figures. This is just another signal about the continued break-down in the rule of law and the institutions we're supposed to trust as members of civil society.

Then there was the HSBC laundering billions for the narco-cartels, or the gentleman in Germany who was institutionalized for ten years by his ex-wife and the bank she worked for after he tried to blow the whistle on their tax- evasion schemes. I'd rather live in a world where this stuff doesn't happen, but it doesn't seem to be an option.</comment></comment>


Tiny Hard Drive Uses Single Atoms to Store Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/tiny-hard-drive-uses-single-atoms-to-store-data-1468854001 <comment><USER2> Several submissions of this item:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116686) (nature.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116615) (gizmodo.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116577) (sciencenewsline.com)

Which will win the race for votes?

</comment><comment><USER3> Unpaywalled article: [http://gizmodo.com/record-setting-hard-drive-writes- informat...](http://gizmodo.com/record-setting-hard-drive-writes-information- one-atom-a-1783740015)</comment>


Django-CMS Levels Up to 2.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/2960157034/django-cms-levels-up

<comment><USER2> Cool. Is there a changelog anywhere? I couldn't find one. We've been running 2.1.0 beta3 and it'd be nice to know what to look for when I upgrade.

<comment><USER3> @endtime: There's no full changelog unfortunately, we have to change this in the future. For a list of changes from 2.0 to 2.1, read <http://bit.ly/e2lyep>. From beta3 it's just a very long list of (in some case serious) bug fixes.</comment></comment>


Full Stack Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://wadefoster.net/post/42802176600/full-stack-marketing

<comment><USER2> _And the startups that are trying to find marketing help tend to get inundated with "squishy b-school marketing" types rather than marketers that can traverse the full marketing stack. This lack of full stack marketers likely explains why most startups are waiting to hire marketing help._

They can only afford to pay the squishy b-school marketing types. Good marketers are worth thousands of dollars per week of work. A really really good one with a good work history can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is not a lack of good marketers. They sure are less good marketers than good programmers. But the only lack here is in one thing: startups tend to think that they can underpay a marketer. Listen, there is no way you should try and hustle someone who knows how much they are worth. You will only get ignored. Plus you want to hire someone who will call out your obvious product flaws. Do you really want to underpay the person who will be in charge of making you money?

They wait to hire a marketer because most startups begin by first creating a product and then thinking of ways to sell it. I've learned that its simpler and more profitable to just sell it and then build it.

Also, its marketers who have the power in the startup/marketer relationship. I can find new clients to work with tomorrow morning, but you cannot find good marketers to hire. The same power programmers have over business guys is had over them by marketers.

<comment><USER3> OP here.

I definitely agree with this. Good Marketers can make money ridiculously fast. The curious thing to me is why, IMHO, great developers aren't undervalued by startups, but great marketers are.

<comment><USER4> Marketer here… developers think they are smarter than marketers.

But, I cry foul on the full stack marketer. Asking for someone that is an expert at everything you mentioned is like asking for an old C wizard, who loves LISP, but plays with Python, Go, & still finds time for iOS, Android, & web development skills. Oh and he happens to be a UI person too…

You can be extremely good at several of those items, but no one person will be an expert in all of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll agree with this. Being a "master" at all of the things listed would take longer than the Internet has existed, but being really good at two or three of them makes you a LOT of money, and VERY valuable.

<comment><USER2> Spot on. Being able to sell things through copy is one of my most powerful skills.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the Beatles Wrote 'A Day in the Life' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/how-the-beatles-wrote-a-day-in-the-life/527001/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> There much more stories about how they wrote it. Eg. the story about the orchestra. They booked the strings for a few days, but only had an idea of the downgoing glissando. He explained it to them, but they just stared. What does he mean? Which tones? So he took some empty note sheets, marked the beginning and the end and then drew a straight line from the top left to the bottom right, which was not easy because it spanned multiple lines. Now they got it. And they could play it now easily.

Also the Andy Warhol story. He made a painting of the crashed Lotus, the one they saw in the newspaper. I saw it live in my hometown's Warhol exhibition. This was quite a moment. Not even the curator knew about "A Day in the life" but it was so obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my favorite things about this song is the way it was originally placed on the record. There's the huge piano chord, then silence, then a high pitched sound allegedly to mess with people's dogs, and then a second or two of gibberish speech that endlessly loops around the inner circle of the record.

Digital media plays that gibberish for a few seconds and then fades out, which is a different experience from the original record which would play it until you actually stopped the record.

It reminds me of how the move from CRT to LCD televisions broke the NES light gun, and makes me wonder what other edge cases we're unknowingly changing or disabling with current technology upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER4> For a more musical deconstruction, check out Scott Freiman's video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTBB6iQbTsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTBB6iQbTsE)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, not sure about the very grandiose 'quadruple plagal cadence' over 'circle of fifths'

<comment><USER4> aka "Hey Joe"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's also worth noting how heavily the whole Sgt. Pepper is influenced by Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock. If you don't know it go listen to it!

<comment><USER7> >"Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock."

Zappa did some amazing stuff, but he didn't invent psychedelic rock. Can read more about the early history here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rock)

<comment><USER6> Not invented, right (but I didn't say exactly that). However in the context of Sgt. Peppers:

According to David Fricke, the album was a major influence on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out!

from Wikipedia

<comment><USER7> Okay, but I'd say there were probably multiple major influences. Pet Sounds is also meant to be a major influence on Sgt. Peppers:

[https://www.quora.com/How-did-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds- infl...](https://www.quora.com/How-did-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds-influence- Sgt-Peppers-Lonely-Hearts-Club-Band)

<comment><USER8> It came out in '67, so it wouldn't have influenced Sgt. Peppers, but I read that John Lennon had like 10 copies of Beefheart's Safe as Milk (Ry Cooder played guitar on that one).

<comment><USER9> According to Wikipedia Pet Sounds was released in 1966 and Sgt Peppers in 1967.

Not only that that but McCartney and Wilson both know that they were influences on each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the major chord heard when a Mac boots up a reference to "A Day in the Life"?

Also-- there's a complete transcription of the Beatles output published by Hal Leonard. For the orchestral gliss from "A Day in the Life" there is an ascending line drawn on a single staff, and the staff is titled "orchestra". I thought that was pretty funny.

</comment><comment><USER11> he's right it is not there best album, which is indeed rubber soul or revolver, however when Lennon sings 'she was just 17, you know what I mean", I've got a pretty damn good idea what he was on about...

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article. Great story.

</comment><comment><USER13> That last E chord never fails to send shivers down my spine.

<comment><USER14> Only chord more famous is the one that starts Help!

<comment><USER15> Surely you mean A Hard Day's Night?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey. So this domain blocks access. I'd like to propose that posts containing links to all such domains be automatically held back. The reason is that posts to sites that require paid access are clearly and unquestionably spam, which is the promotion of paid material. And spam links should not be considered legitimate posts on any social media site wishing to maintain credibility and quality of discussion. Thanks for considering this.

<comment><USER17> I'm not being blocked. Are you sure that your ISP isn't blocking the website?

<comment><USER16> When I click on the link it says I need to purchase a $39.99/year or $3.99/month subscription to view the article.

(So weird someone is downvoting my posts about this, what possible reason could there be to do such a thing.)

<comment><USER18> One reason: excluding all paid journalism seems dumb.

<comment><USER16> Ad hominems are fallacies.

<comment><USER19> I've come to think that quoting latin phrases at people is in itself a logical fallacy. Is there a latin phrase for that?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Browser Permissions on Android: What No One Is Talking About - <AUTHOR> https://snapsearch.online/general/browser-permissions-on-android/ <comment><USER2> Why do I need to enable JavaScript to read this text post? What exactly does JavaScript do here except unhide the content? Especially when this post talks about privacy and safety.

<comment><USER3> Like I often see, it is readable if you disable CSS too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a point that the browser apps take a large number of permissions, but compared to apps, websites take much less of your data. That's one of the reasons why so many websites like reddit push you to use the app on mobile.

<comment><USER5> > That's one of the reasons why so many websites like reddit push you to use > the app on mobile.

The Yelp website is one of the biggest offenders in this regard. If you're not viewing it in desktop mode then be prepared to get redirected to the Play store any time you tap on any link.

<comment><USER6> I treat yelp and Pinterest links like links on [insert sketchy site].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When Android apps can freely draw over other apps without warning, privacy permissions feel almost like security-theater.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since the original post seems confused about why a browser would ask for contacts:

A legitimate reason could be so that they can easily autofill forms for you.

<comment><USER9> What, for when I report my friends to the police? Seriously though, the assumption that I would be one of my own contacts is weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> android have means to let browser/apps download and save files locally in SD/Download without the Storage permission. Chrome decides not to use it, because reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's exactly the point - it's not required to ask for permissions - they still want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is definitely something to think about thank you

</comment><comment><USER12> its not a surprise that chrome is one of them..</comment>


Why Should You Start A Startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.gaurano.com/why-start-startup/

<comment><USER2> Good read with a refreshing POV!</comment>