Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? - <AUTHOR> Over the last 6 months, I've been building a lightweight automation product called plainflow.com<p>You? <comment><USER3> I just redesigned what an offer letter looks like. [1] I think it's cool for a few different reasons: (1) most people don't truly understand the value behind an offer from a startup. Equity for example is tricky for newcomers. (2) Most companies don't share this information unless you push them on it. I wish more companies would be transparent about it, and I think doing this will help.

Here's a demo: [https://coinbase.onsites.co/o/aurora-h](https://coinbase.onsites.co/o/aurora-h)

I also redesigned the onsite experience. Demo here as well: [https://airbnb.onsites.co/joe-zadeh](https://airbnb.onsites.co/joe-zadeh)

[1] As with many things in design, I think I should attribute the source of inspiration, which is Carta. They wrote about a new offer letter format back in 2016. I'm basically taking their Apple Keynote slides and moving them to the web.

<comment><USER4> nice work! Is this available as a service? or you planning to opensource it?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It's available as a service to use at onsites.co.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://tracket.com](http://tracket.com) \- It's google news + the internet archive. You can go back in time and see what the top breaking headlines were on a given day. I've been running it since July 2016 so there's nothing before that, unfortunately.

[http://ripplescan.com](http://ripplescan.com) \- A website to visually explore the Ripple XRP network, lookup accounts, and transactions, and subscribe to XRP news in your inbox every day.

[https://exponentialbackoff.substack.com](https://exponentialbackoff.substack.com) \- A newsletter where I write about the soft skills side of software engineering that I've learned throughout my career. Hopefully it's helpful to some younger engineers that are just starting out in their careers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm hooking up a piece of kitchen equipment to a cloud backend. It's for a major restaurant chain.

I've done this probably a dozen times over the last couple of years as a demonstration of the technology.

It always ends the same: Every party fights for ownership of the data, but nobody can figure out what to do with the data once they have it. Nobody wants to pay for it, much less support a subscription model. The free sites are held together with duct tape and chewing gum. Nobody wants to support it in the field. There are too many variables in network infrastructure. You can't use the network in the store because the cashier system is on there and PCI says no way. Getting a solid 802.11 signal in a room full of sheet metal is a nightmare. Customers want to use off-the-shelf cellular hotspots that are pieces of garbage and couldn't hold a TCP packet if it was covered in crazy glue.

But the demonstrations always go well. The customers think it's cool.

So on we go, boldly onward into the IoT future. I just pushed the next release up.

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent 3 months scraping 6 million pages from an extremely old political web forum (I think their backend was written in perl and hasn't been updated since 2001 and the response times for these pages were extremely high) in an effort to learn NLP stuff with a working database. Its cool because you get to see how old Boomers digested huge events during 9/11 up until now and the slow decline of web forums as a medium. The pain is trying to parse the actual pages since the dev never learned how to liberally use div tags like we do now.

<comment><USER8> Have you hosted it anywhere, that might be an interesting read.

<comment><USER7> 1\. no i haven't since it will most likely result in the site owner coercing me since its his content

2\. i can def. make a blog about it which is the point of this

<comment><USER8> If you have any interesting observations from it I think a lot of people would be interested in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm working on a voice-driven rapid prototyping tool for web development.

The goal is to be able to say things like "give me a header element at the top - height 250, width 100%", and it'll inject it immediately.

Combined with mouseover inspection and positional guidance (e.g. moving the mouse to a particular spot and saying "put a folder icon here").

<comment><USER10> I like this! Would help to sit back and layout the overall structure from a distance to get a proper feel.

Also, reminds me of the Celery Man sketch from Tim and Eric. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWBEK8w_YY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWBEK8w_YY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A magic notebook for the web.

[http://ObservableHQ.com](http://ObservableHQ.com)

Why is it cool?

* Every cell is live, reactive code that re-evaluates automatically whenever any of its inputs do. This includes awaiting promises and yielding new values from (potentially async) generators.

* A notebook can import and reuse any cell from any other published notebook.

* You have access to all of the computational goodies that the web platform gives you: graphics capabilities with <canvas> and <svg>, the GPU, the world's largest open source library with npm, and web APIs.

It's been interesting thinking about what it would mean to have a read/write medium for the web — where you're working with live values, and not in a "dead code" text editor. For just a teeny hint of some of the possibilities, check out Tom's autocompletion gif: [https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/966073331207233536](https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/966073331207233536)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm working fulltime on a tool called TimeShark ([https://timeshark.io](https://timeshark.io)). It generates invoices based off color coded events from your Google Calendar.

It's cool because I as well as many others got tired of spending time...logging time. A lot of us live inside our Calendars so why not build on top of that behavior?

Very much in listening and feedback mode right. If TimeShark is interesting to you, please reach out (contact details in my profile).

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm working on a higher level, more visual debugger (video here): [http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd](http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd)

It's cool because programmers should be able to easily watch their algorithms transforming the data they operate on.

I think this is an area with a lot of potential for seriously improving computer programming: we need better instruments for making observations of dynamic program state (or dynamic database state, etc.). It's kind of an inverse problem to what we've needed in the sciences, though, with microscopes/telescopes etc.: (one of) our problems is that we have too _much_ data, and we need ways of automatically abstracting and presenting just the relevant parts—something like 'abstractoscopes'. This is my attempt at making one.

<comment><USER14> At times I've added a graphviz output method to a data structure; it's pretty handy, and you don't have to do a separate design diagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am working on testing ("ground truthing") common observational astronomy modeling techniques against hydrodynamic simulations. The basic approach is to generate synthetic/mock observations from the simulations, apply typical model-fitting approaches, and then see how the model results compare with the properties of the original simulations. Our first paper on this has recently been accepted ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07084](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07084)) and we're preparing a second paper looking at emission from dust in new simulations which more realistically treat the cosmological history of galaxies.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sketch to React Native: [https://github.com/nanohop/sketch-to-react- native](https://github.com/nanohop/sketch-to-react-native)

It takes designs for mobile apps (from Sketch files), and tries to convert those into React Native components. It's still early days, but it's a promising start.

It's cool because if I can get it working fully, it can replace a large chunk of my consulting projects (taking designs and converting them to the initial code)

<comment><USER17> Have you looked at airbnb's sketch/react tools?

<comment><USER16> Yes! They were an inspiration for this actually.

They can generate sketch files from react components ([https://github.com/airbnb/react-sketchapp](https://github.com/airbnb/react- sketchapp)) but not the other way around.

The painting with code demo ([https://airbnb.design/painting-with- code/](https://airbnb.design/painting-with-code/)) was a step towards that though, and I think it's really interesting as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An ongoing comics series. Elevator pitch: "Imagine you're watching funny- animal Star Trek... except every other episode is from the point of view of the Borg." Also the Federation is actually a quasi-monastic order of Space Jesuits chasing after whatever remnants they can find of the vanished Ancients, and the Borg is a bunch of goth hippie dryads dreamed up by massive shipminds, and did I mention everyone is a cartoon animal with no pants, and it's intentionally designed to be too big for just me to draw and I'm really looking forwards to/dreading when it has enough inertia for me to actually hire some friends to draw parts of it, and...

I've been spending the past couple years kicking around a massive space opera. I'm finally starting to finish pages of its comic-book incarnation. It's good to start moving forwards on a story again, wrapping up all the loose ends on my previous graphic novel took far too long.

[http://egypt.urnash.com/parallax](http://egypt.urnash.com/parallax) \- very much a placeholder right now, just the last iteration of the pitch bible and some links; once I have enough pages drawn I'll start having them show up there. Right now they're just on the Patreon.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am working on my own startup (since 12 months, but we incorporated only in August 2017). I am not here to publicize what we are doing, but rather to share a very important consideration.

I used to work at Amazon Web Services (6 years), then VMware (2 years), then at a startup as an early employee/CTO (1 year). My job satisfaction decreased at every step.

I feel so lucky and blessed to be able to work on something that I truly care about, without the usual corporate BS.

<comment><USER20> I feel like I'm on the same path. Is this something you'd built up over time and managed to make profitable so you could go full-time?

<comment><USER19> Not yet!

I saved enough to be able to afford a 12-15 month period without a salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Im making an aggregate site for youtube mixes - house, lofi, ect.

[https://ytradio.xyz/](https://ytradio.xyz/)

It started with only live streams (24/7 youtube music channels)

I enjoy lofi youtube mixes when coding, and theres a lot of them.

Currently im adding functionality for users to curate the mixes

I think its cool bc its kind of like a shared youtube playlist for a particular niche, with nice ui, and soon with curation

<comment><USER22> Hey, I really like it!

I've wanted to build something similar but haven't gotten around to it.

Couple questions: What do the icons at the top of the page do? (The music note, rain drop, anchor, etc) I think they are some sort of filter but click them doesn't seem to do anything. A tooltip or quick note might help the user know what they are for.

would you consider adding soundcloud integration? I have a bunch of playlists/music that I can only find on soundcloud and want a way to integrate with youtube playlist for continuous play/mixed playlists.

are you open to outsider help? I've been looking for a project to help contribute to and really like what you have started. Wouldn't mind helping with some PRs if you are open to it.

Great work!

<comment><USER21> Hi:))

Thanks:)

So I just broke those this week with an update & some refactoring, but they are for soundscapes, like rain, ocean, cafe background noise ect. - <USER2> thinking about how to group things

You know, open sourcing with multiple devs is something I haven't put much thought into - at least for this project. I will have to move around some configs and do some readme stuff but growing that collaboration muscle seems important. Ill let that stir in my head, its still my baby, but I don't see any harm, so maybe in a little:)

Soundcloud is a great idea:) I didn't think of that either! - probably bc I don't use it enough. Im definitely going to look into that this weekend.

Thanks and I'm really glad u guys like it this made my day:)

<comment><USER22> If you decide to open source it, feel free to shoot me an email at email@example.com would love to contribute.

In any case, I'll be keeping an eye on the project. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm working on a simple cooking site targeted for millenials and beginners. No long blog posts about how you used to make this with your (insert family member here) and (insert more useless information here), no bloat. Just ingredients and steps. If a recipe suggestion is voted high enough, that new recipe will replace what was originally posted.

Vue front end, back end will be Laravel!

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://pullreminders.com](https://pullreminders.com) \- slack reminders for open pull requests and team metrics for review turnaround time, pr size, etc

<comment><USER25> Nice! Too bad it costs money, otherwise I'd use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm making a 2D casual/puzzle game similar to scrabble but instead of building chains of letters to form words, you build chains of words that rhyme with each other based off the picture on the tile.

Some tiles have multiple labels. A picture of a cat can be rhymed with bat or hat, buy it can also be a "pet" and rhyme with net, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://oneminutefax.com](https://oneminutefax.com) \- Send free faxes online without having to create an account. Proof-of-concept is up.

<comment><USER27> Please don't! Efax owns patent for sending faxes online and they troll/bully other website into sometimes buying them out sometimes shutting them down. There is 99% chances you will receive their C&D letter :(

<comment><USER26> Their big patent, [https://patents.google.com/patent/US6208638](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6208638), expired last year

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just finished a rough draft of a long article on CRDTs, together with demo code of real-time collaboration on iOS (over CloudKit) and macOS (over a simulated P2P network): [http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with- history/](http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/)

I think this new operational take on CRDTs (which is not my original idea) has the potential to be quite revolutionary, combining all the benefits of CvRDTs and CmRDTs and allowing brand new replicated data types to be created rather intuitively—all while maintaining near-optimal time and space complexity and providing a common interface for things like past revision viewing and garbage collection.

Hope to publish the article for real in the next few days.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm working on a mobile app to run social experiments.

I want to know if you can take a small group of strangers, make them use an app together, and then 5 minutes later have them be best friends.

It's cool because despite how complex people are, our relationships, behaviors, and thoughts follow well-defined patterns.

<comment><USER30> How are you planning to achieve this? Connect them by their most relevant interests?

<comment><USER29> No, I think interest based matching is overrated. I think shared experiences, storytelling, setting common goals will be more effective. I have a list of a bunch of mechanisms I want to test this with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'll throw y'all a curveball - IRON CROWN ([https://www.ironcrowncomic.com](https://www.ironcrowncomic.com)) is an action-adventure webcomic about mercs, monsters, and a dictator's daughter fleeing a coup - with all of the above standing against a much darker enemy on the horizon.

Also updates every Monday, rated T+, and published through Hiveworks which is a neat indie publisher that probably hosts that other webcomic you love. Since I'm the creator (and a designer/illustrator by trade), I'd be happy to answer any questions about getting a foot in this sort of business. Can be incredibly demanding, but creating your own stories is almost always worth it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm working on a bit of testbench software for these guys - [http://albatern.co.uk/](http://albatern.co.uk/)

The software runs on an industrial controller (basically an Intel Atom with a proprietary bus to connect tons of I/O modules), driving a bunch of electrical and hydraulic gear, and logging data for analysis.

I like Albatern's idea for a wave power array based on lots of small, easily- deployed modules, and I'm hoping that their tests pan out and get them to production readiness.

While I have just spent 2.5 days freezing my ass off coding in an unheated industrial shed in a Scottish winter, it was a shed full of massive wave power components - hydraulic hoses as thick as your arm, man-height generators, and so on - so that's pretty fun! When I wasn't coding, I also got to make myself useful by stripping cables and wiring an emergency stop box.

In previous client work, I scrambled around wiring up sensors and programmed control code and UIs while standing in a small shipping container floating on a tidal platform in the middle of a Scottish estuary ( [https://sustainablemarine.com/plat-i](https://sustainablemarine.com/plat-i) ); and more recently, learned how to do mean-time-between-failure analysis for an industrial Ethernet network that needed to live at the bottom of the sea with ten-year maintenance intervals and a >£10,000 bill to bring it up for component replacement.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm building [https://timeguard.io](https://timeguard.io), which is an iOS app that acts like HN's "noprocrast" setting but for the entire internet.

You pick distracting sites/apps to block, and then you choose when to pause the block and access them. I've found that little extra bit of friction in checking FB/HN/Twitter is enough to keep me far more concentrated and present throughout the day. Would love feedback from other HN users!

<comment><USER34> Hey Kyle, this looks nice. I use RescueTime[1] for this purpose on desktop, but since it doesn't easily interop with mobile/other devices, it's still easy to slip into procrastination by pulling out the phone. I'll try TimeGuard as a way to fill the gap.

For me, the killer feature for this type of tool would be a blanket anti- procrastination mode that works across all devices. Maybe it could even make sense to integrate somehow at the router level?

1 - [https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/)

<comment><USER33> Thanks Dane! I'm working on a version for macOS next that will work together with the phone app. What OS do you run on your computer?

PS Good luck with fundraising!

<comment><USER34> Thanks!

I'm on a Mac, so the macOS/iOS combo would be great for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A website that shows if there's a scene after credits for movies in theaters. So long for all that people standing on the stairs because a scene just started.

Simple stuff, some scraping

<comment><USER36> Why/how will yours be better than all the others?

ex. [http://aftercredits.com/](http://aftercredits.com/)

<comment><USER35> Forgot to say that it's in a language that is not english. Aftercredits and Moviestingers are exactly what I'm scraping, plus some other magic...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm working on developing my own language.

The best way I can describe it is: imagine Python but statically-typed with type inference, proper concurrency support (via greenthreads), sum types (like enums in Rust), and immutable data structures in the standard library (like Clojure). I may even add optional checks that a function is pure.

The stage I'm at right now is learning how type inference works well enough to be able to implement a correct type inference engine for it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Im working on [https://outsidelist.com](https://outsidelist.com) and [http://hollabackapp.com](http://hollabackapp.com).

Outside list is cool because it (hopefully) encourages people to travel and get outside more.

Hollaback is cool because it's sort of an "about" page as a service, and lets people know you made the thing they're looking at, not a team, not a company, you.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've spent the last few years building a product to help every user and business own their data. It solves Identity, Language, and Hosting, with customizable UIs.

It's cool because it can change the way we all communicate; instead of interacting with 3rd parties, you always interact with your AI that handles everything for you.

Just coming out of stealth, launch posts and whatnot coming soon :)

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://token.beteleported.com](https://token.beteleported.com) \- It's a cryptocurrency token for a VR marketplace. Store 360 degree videos and photos on the blockchain, for 50 years, just $1. It's cool because you never have to worry about losing or deleting your memories. Customers can meet with professionals virtually, without having to travel anywhere. Professionals can bill their clients, with the cryptocurrency token.

It's also an interactive map, to view published 360 photos and videos, called moments. Use the token for storing moments, viewing moments, giving tips to moment creators, and paying for professional services in VR.

[https://get3dtours.com](https://get3dtours.com) \- a SaaS product that makes it super easy to add virtual tour experiences to any site.

[https://vrinrealestate.com](https://vrinrealestate.com) \- a comparison site of existing VR virtual tour products.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm building a command line tool in python for front end development. Im self taught and never actually have built anything. Besides that, I was unhappy with everything else out there. I could either learn someone else's tool or learn to build my own.

I do have a question. I'm using urllib.request instead of using requests to download normalize and I found conflicting information regarding if it was safe or not.

Finally, can I get feedback on my website. Gotta lose the fear.

[https://www.talescript.com](https://www.talescript.com)

Edit: for the life of me I can't find how to solve a full height div on mobile, specifically in Firefox. It happens regardless if I use 100vh or 100%. It seems that it can only be solved in JavaScript (which I'm still searching for a practical solution), tough, I would rather avoid a js solution.

</comment><comment><USER42> I quit my job as a sysadmin to be a stay-at-home dad.

In my spare time I'm working on a console-based mail-client, scriptable with lua, some golang-based projects (object-storage, puppet-dashboard replacement, and similar things)

Beyond that this year I'm mostly relaxing and pushing a pram in the snow. Fun times :)

</comment><comment><USER43> No link, as this is a scratch my own itch thing for now, but I'm working on a personal 'hub' web app that is part UX/UI experiment, and part a way to integrate various tools I've created over the years to ease various pain points in my life.

Some of this has to do with solving the problem of the deluge of information I consume, through psychological 'intervention' as well as some way to store all this stuff and make it easy to filter and find the useful bits.

Some of it is journalling-related, and vaguely in the Quantified Self area.

A significant portion is about finding ways to actually use this amazing, powerful computer that I have in my pocket for things that actually, quantifiably, provably improve my life (and hopefully, eventually, that of others). This is mostly in the direction of autism-related issues, anxiety, maintaining social connections, and so on. Applying the (relatively) well- supported lessons from psychology to the bafflingly advanced technology that is part of my daily life, and that of most people around me.

Mostly it's a vanity project though, that I can currently afford indulging in. I figure that after years of working and making money off building stuff I don't care about much, it's time to let my more creative side express itself in ways that might prove useful somehow. I'm not an painter, or a musician, or a poet, but I can code, I love to code (when it's on my own terms), and I'm still amazed that for less than five bucks I can have a server running that does whatever I want it to do, and as a 'full-stack developer', that's quite a lot!

Part of me wants to work on things that are more directly beneficial to others, but 1) I have enough 'runway' to do that too, eventually, and 2) I've grown weary of always trying to make sure that what I do is 'useful' by some measure that doesn't quite feel like it originates from within. Many of the best things I've done started out as scratches to personal itches, so perhaps it's okay to 'indulge' for now.

<comment><USER44> This sounds interesting! I think I'm jealous, sounds like you have some real space to explore and craft and that's where happiness can be found!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am working on server.js: [https://serverjs.io/](https://serverjs.io/). It is cool because:

\- You install it with `npm install server` and use modern ES6+ including async/await very naturally.

\- Node.js is the most popular "framework, library or tool" [1], but getting started with most of the current Node.js server frameworks has a really steep learning curve.

\- Plugins are coming! They will be a really easy way to extend server in ways that middleware cannot by adding some lifecycle calls.

Feedback is welcome!

[1] [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology-f...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology- frameworks-libraries-and-tools)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm working on [https://www.framedtweets.com](https://www.framedtweets.com) — it's an easy, beautiful way to preserve and remember your favorite tweets forever (to save them from the internet's ephemerality).

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm still working on intercooler.js:

[http://intercoolerjs.org/](http://intercoolerjs.org/)

It's cool because REST/HATEOAS is the original and unique software architecture of the web, and building client/server apps in Javascript/JSON throws that architecture out:

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing- rest.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-rest.html)

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for- humans.ht...](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://BitBank.nz](https://BitBank.nz) a cryptocurrency prediction dashboard with live updating charts, API access, bulk data.

Its cool because i get deep into data engineering/analytics, machine learning/AI. Its using latest Google Cloud tech and my customers are always pushing me to better the product, myself and have done lots of work in open source.

Its interesting seeing what the customer perceptions of data science/prediction systems are and dispelling some of the rumors and snake oil e.g. forecasts get less accurate with time so people shouldn't trust out of date forecasts that are forecasting a long way into the future.

<comment><USER49> Have you been using it yourself to trade? How good would you say it is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://vrsketch.eu/](https://vrsketch.eu/) \- Editing and viewing virtual reality plugin for sketchup. It's a lot of basic research on UI/UX in VR.

[http://pypy.org](http://pypy.org) \- Python interpreter with a just in time compiler. It's the only alternative python implementation out there, after failures of unladen swallow/pyston etc.

[http://bloc11.co.za](http://bloc11.co.za) \- Own climbing gym. It's cool to work directly with people and pursue own ideas in a small space.

</comment><comment><USER51> I am working on Learn Anything. ([https://learn-anything.xyz](https://learn- anything.xyz))

The goal is to visualise all the different topics you can learn about and provide the best resources available for learning the topic.

It's also Open Source ([https://github.com/learn-anything/learn- anything](https://github.com/learn-anything/learn-anything)) so the cool part I think is that the users can actually be developers and submit changes they wish to see on the website.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm working on a technology that will enable people to easily distribute and copy data in a secure and more performant way, the more people are using it. It's basically throwing a local cache over the web, so when you neighbour already have the data, you can download it from them without being afraid if the data has been altered in any way. I'm super excited to work on it, as it combines my two favourite areas, open source and decentralized. The project I work on is called IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm building a mobile app that's a bit like the anti-Instagram. It gives you confusing set of shutter/filter options that post weird, uneditable and uncanny photos to a feed whose sole mode of interaction is scrolling and drawing.

Mostly it's a conceptual art piece that's meant to offer a different model of being social online — one that's wholly about ongoing presence and participation, not accumulation and curation. I think I'll try to sell it for a buck in the app store.

</comment><comment><USER54> [https://pagedraw.io/](https://pagedraw.io/) — keeps me from ever having to write HTML and CSS for web apps again. Enables solo developers to do more by letting us design UIs in a visual tool and not have to re-code them later. Enables developers on teams import their designer's Sketch or Figma files into code, skipping the tiresome designer-developer handoff full of tediously re- doing their design in JSX/CSS.

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://www.venturecoffee.xyz/](https://www.venturecoffee.xyz/) \- A platform to support indie makers in building successful businesses. After reading Andrey Azimov's post ( [https://www.medium.com/AndreyAzimov](https://www.medium.com/AndreyAzimov) ) on medium, I was really impressed and thought of building something to help him and other makers like him.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm working on [http://fibery.io](http://fibery.io)

Fibery is work management platform that should replace all PM tools in the next 10 years :)

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm working on an improved version of Heroku Dataclips called QueryClips ([https://www.queryclips.com](https://www.queryclips.com)).

It supports MySQL and Postgres, supports organizations (invite your non- engineer colleagues), sharing to google sheets, JSON, CSV, email, and is secure (encrypted credentials, read-only transactions, etc).

I have much bigger plans, but for now I'm bootstrapping it and so far customers seem pretty happy! Give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER58> I built a little website showcasing minimalist packing lists called: [https://onebag.travel/](https://onebag.travel/)

<comment><USER21> hey this is really cool:) I like looking at what bags people use, its nice to see some that are 'battle tested' \- for ideas on what to pick when I go travel hiking:)

<comment><USER58> Thanks, that is some great feedback.

Your nice comment really made my week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I've been working on Fructika [https://fructika.com](https://fructika.com) for the last few months as a little side project. It's an app that helps you manage your fructose consumption (my partner suffers from fructose malabsorption).

It's cool because it makes her life better and I've had some great feedback from other people trying to manage their intake of sugars about how it makes their lives easier :)

</comment><comment><USER60> [https://yumefood.com.au](https://yumefood.com.au) \- a platform that mitigates surplus food from going to waste, saving CO2 emissions, landfill and water usage in the process at a massive scale.

It also enables organisations like schools, universities and missions get access to bulk food at a fraction of the usual price.

I never thought it'd be possible to affect this type of change using code, which is quite cool IMO!

</comment><comment><USER61> Www.chipscompo.com

It's a little music production community. You know how everyone on HN laments that small quirky websites have been eaten by bigger ones, so they don't exist any more? My website is cool because it has that sort of community - intelligent and good at music but also funny and super weird. We all kinda know each other, which makes it fun.

Also, a bunch of us have gotten a lot better at making music, which is another nice win. :)

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm working on my Weekly Digest (needs a more catchy name!)

[https://conradj.co.uk/weeklydigest](https://conradj.co.uk/weeklydigest)

It grabs what I've read from Pocket and makes a page for each week.

It's cool because what I read is better than what I can write, and I think this is true for others. I've got loads of ideas for it, it's going to be massive, as long as HN like it.

</comment><comment><USER63> [https://github.com/PetrochukM/PyTorch- NLP](https://github.com/PetrochukM/PyTorch-NLP) \-- Following writing a NLP research paper. Working on open sourcing the tools that helped me rapidly prototype. PyTorch-NLP comes with pre-trained embeddings, samplers, dataset loaders, metrics, neural network modules and text encoders.

</comment><comment><USER64> I spent the last two years of my spare time putting together an RPG in Slack: [https://www.chatandslash.com/](https://www.chatandslash.com/)

I think it's cool because it's almost definitely the most complex Slack bot out there (though I admit that's an arbitrary metric), but it's for sure the most advanced game on the platform.

<comment><USER65> Very similar idea to Multi User Dungeon (MUD) RPG games back in the day. Was that your inspiration? If you're not familiar with those you should check out their history.

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

<comment><USER64> Absolutely something I took inspiration from, though the primary inspiration was more along the lines of Legend of the Red Dragon, a BBS Door game that hit the height of it's popularity back when MUDs hit the height of theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> [https://github.com/felipeochoa/mole](https://github.com/felipeochoa/mole)

It's an Ohm-inspired packrat parser for Emacs. It's cool because it uses the packrat cache to allow efficient incremental repairs, so your 20k line buffer doesn't have to be completely reparsed just because you added a one line function in line 7

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm working on a technical analysis alert site for cryptocurrencies. There are a few out now, but they are limited to a few TA algorithm's and a handful of intervals.

I'm aiming to offer as many algorithms/candle intervals as I can and make them fully customizable. Also implementing a screener and the ability to test your alerts through papertrading with historical data.

</comment><comment><USER68> Needed a way to keep track of TV shows I watch and when see when episodes air. All existing sites I found were so messy and bloated with stuff I don't really care about.

Wanted to have a list of new episodes and a heads up about the next few days whats coming up so [https://boldshows.com](https://boldshows.com) was born.

</comment><comment><USER69> [https://coinzaa.com](https://coinzaa.com) a site i m building as i m learning about cryptocoins

[https://opensimworld.com/](https://opensimworld.com/) bcause i feel like virtual worlds have greatly underappreciated potential and VR is not the best way to approach them

</comment><comment><USER70> Been working on [https://serpapi.com](https://serpapi.com)

We value full and unreasonable transparency both in our internal and external communications. We believe a world with complete and open transparency is a better world. It has been very interesting to try to make the search engine data world more open.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm building a service called FormAPI: [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

It's cool because... well, it makes it easy for programmers to fill out and sign PDF forms. So it's not really a "cool" product, but I enjoy working on it, and it saves people a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER25> On some level I feel this question is just here to advertise the poster's project.

I think it would have been better if they had put their project in the comments like everyone else instead of giving themselves more visibility by putting it in the main question.

They may not have intended it this way - but it's possible.

<comment><USER30> Funnily enough I overlooked the short text until you mentioned it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I am currently working on building a system that processes and provides analytical data for a major semi-conductor manufacturing company.

It is cool because we have a serious stream of data to collect, stream, process and store, and provide users with very fast access to massive datasets.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.telltali.com/](https://www.telltali.com/) – Voice-first timekeeping for Alexa and Google Assistant. I think it's cool because we're solving real business problems with voice. Win/win.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm working on interaction designs that take full user's body into account.

It's great because we are not just made of minds and fingers. We perceive the world with our bodies and we shouldn't exclude them from interaction.

Also, it's fun.

</comment><comment><USER74> Raiseblocks - [https://raiseblocks.com](https://raiseblocks.com) (last weekend project, still needs work)

An ICO (initial coin offering) listing site.

</comment><comment><USER75> I've founded a startup with kick-ass people to build the future of Electronic Medical Records. And it looks very bright, transparent, intelligent, and automated :)

</comment><comment><USER76> from last one week, I am working on topic2book, it generates a book for a given topic (or phrase). few books that generated are at [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q0FBmn8cRaZRGkDnRgxZ...](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q0FBmn8cRaZRGkDnRgxZrvRET69Rntwd)

</comment><comment><USER77> I am working on setting up a custom discourse forum for parents to discuss learning activities and ideas for kids.

</comment><comment><USER78> Working on an SMS crypto trading bot where you can text it trading commands according to whatever exchange you connected to. I've been in many situations where I needed to trade and logging into the exchange on my phone is cumbersome and could sometimes take 3+ minutes, and by then the opportunity is gone.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link?

<comment><USER78> Still in beta on my localhost, probably launching in a few weeks. It's a fairly big project even just as an MVP for a single exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'm working on a static CMS with GUI for everyone, especially for non technical people. It works like dynamic CMS but generates static output.

Https://getpublii.com</comment>


AirPlay for Android - Android Transporter for the Nexus 7 and the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://esrlabs.com/android-transporter-for-the-nexus-7-and-the-raspberry-pi

<comment><USER2> Oh this is way cooler than I thought. It's already easy to uPnP/AirPlay CONTENT from Android to AppleTV/XBMC/whatever.

This does screen-sharing, but not the same way Apple does (Apple's method does not work with XBMC).</comment>


How to Avoid Limiting Your Programming Career - <AUTHOR> https://zeroequalsfalse.press/posts/how-to-avoid-limiting-your-programming-career#.XIpljjFyY9Q.hackernews <comment><USER2> Articles like this do a disservice to everyone. For starters: a Stack Overflow survey is not a random sample of all programmers - it's a sample of people who are on Stack Overflow.

A better source might be the Bureau of Labor Statistics - [https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics.htm#age](https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics.htm#age) \- which shows

      * 68% of "Computer Programmers" older than age 35,
      * 45% of "Computer Programmers" above age 45.
      * 29% of "Web Developers" above age 45

Most of this article doesn't hold up, but the agist part is the most egregious.</comment>


The Default American Workplace is Fundamentally Flawed - <AUTHOR> http://blangslet.com/post/58233827613/the-default-american-workplace-is-fundamentally-flawed <comment><USER2> "1) Communication breakdown. Multiple offices in multiple locations and no one knows what other people are working on, how much progress they have made and how what they are doing fits into the overall scheme of company goals.

2) Productivity vs. time spent in office. The office can be a wasteland for productivity and time spent in an office building does not directly correlate to more productive progress.

3) Creativity is implicitly discouraged. Creative talent is vastly undervalued, misunderstood and malnourished. The default American workplace murders creativity.

4) Inefficient management. Inter-office politics and personal agendas often influence executive decision making more than shared company goals. "

These are all signs that you need better Middle Management, not less of it, and not sex with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Poor choice of title considering the article you linked to doesn't contain anything resembling your words "F _ck Middle Management_. The article only states that management can 'often' (not always) be inefficient. Additionally; this is not really a guide to a better work life either. Did you link to the wrong blogpost?

Absolutes; like implying that all middle-management is bad, are generally incorrect. Things are never black or white. So when you paint an extreme, you are almost always guaranteed to be wrong. In this case; middle-management can be cumbersome or bureaucratic, but very often also can be helpful, important and necessary. I hope you aren't arguing that all middle-management worldwide is useless; because that would just be silly.

I'm making the effort to comment on this; because I'm increasingly noticing that contributors to Hacker News impose their own beliefs upon a link they submit. By making a title more sensational, you are also making it less nuanced. This doesn't do justice to the writer you promote, and is unfair to the readers at Hacker News.

Edit: rephrased. Edit 2: If you are the writer; disregard the last paragraph ;-)

<comment><USER4> Why is this even the title on HN? The title of the article is "The Default American Workplace is Fundamentally Flawed"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The post is vague, but it sounds like you're trying to make an app that turns everyone in a large organization into good managers. I understand how you might try to organize the information, but how are you going to ensure that the inputs are high quality? Management is really hard because it is about making difficult trade-offs with uncertain information, all while dealing with human beings who are not deterministic information processors.

A lot of management issues are not problems of technology, they are problems where the _best_ solution is still a _suboptimal_ solution for many of the people involved. The reason every company goal doesn't have a specific task associated with it is because goals are inherently high level and static, but tasks need to be flexible. It's also not certain what tasks will make the goal successful on a given day.

Same goes for promotions. Real life is not an RPG - you don't collect experience points until you become a level 36 Business Analyst. Smart companies promote people when they've proven either a proficiency or aptitude for the next level job and the company has a need for it. It's very hard to set a timeline for either of those, especially when the next level involves hard-to-measure abilities.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggest finding another job; they're really not all like the one described. (But, I've been there!)

Even I, who works for a mega corp, have little or none of this. But, I work in a small group, and not in IT but in product development. (I can't claim that the other 39,980 employees feel similarly, though.)

With demand for developers so high, it makes sense to move around until you find a place that feels right.

<comment><USER5> This is a great point - the culture of a workplace has more to do with the culture of your team and the quality of your immediate management than it does with the organization. There are people in small startups who are miserable at work every day because of bad management, and people who work in large companies that are excited to go to work and make a difference.

We usually think small companies have better management, but that's survivor bias - the ones with bad management tend to fail, or not scale up. And the people who are in large organizations that like their job tend to write about it less, because they're able to think about other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This isn't an article, it's a sales pitch. And it feels like one of those awful late-night infomercials, to boot:

"If your work life a _mess_? [Cut to scene of woman at a desk covered in a mess of loose papers, with spaghetti sauce in her messy hair, making a screwed up face and throwing her hands up in the air as if to say 'I give up!'] Try myRandomStartup.io!"

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands "Inter-office politics and personal agendas often influence executive decision making more than shared company goals."

Office politics are everywhere you go. Be it a huge corporation or a small startup. Everybody has their groups and their axes to grind, friends they promote and demote people they see as a threat.

It would be nice to remove it, but you're talking about something that's a part of every office culture.

<comment><USER8> Spot on but you can generalize it a little more. Anytime you have more than 2 people with their own goals and limited resources, you're going to have politics. It's built into our species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The default American workplace as imagined by a programmer, I'd say. " Productivity vs. time spent in office..."

a) Not all workplaces are offices. b) In some workplaces, employing highly skilled personnel (hospitals, say), time spent in the workplace is critical.</comment>


Why the Dark Side of the Force Had to Be Dark - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/why-the-dark-side-of-the-force-had-to-be-dark <comment><USER2> FYI: This article does not address the title.</comment>


How do you make Raspberry Pi? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24430558

<comment><USER2> On the subject of "Trying this at home", it turns out you can approximate this type of manufacturing process at home with under $500 worth of tools!

The uncommon things you need are:

1\. Custom PCB ([http://oshpark.com/](http://oshpark.com/) $1.66/sq. in., min. only 3 copies of board)

2\. Stencil for your custom PCB ([http://www.oshstencils.com/](http://www.oshstencils.com/) $.60/sq. in.)

3\. Solder paste [different than regular solder, it's glue-like at room temperature rather than solid] ([http://www.smtsolderpaste.com/](http://www.smtsolderpaste.com/) there may be better vendors for paste, I've used these guys. Anyone have suggestions?)

4\. Heat Source, for on-the-cheap use either a high-wattage toaster oven or hot plate (never to be used with food again!) See Sparkfun's writeup on it here:[https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59](https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59)

As you can see, as pg said the hardware renaissance is coming ([http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html)). As an example oshstencils.com just launched a few months ago and before that it was a minimum of $30+ for even the cheapest mylar stencil vendors. Things are moving fast!

<comment><USER3> I agree that a lot of this stuff is surprisingly affordable and doable with low-cost equipment. That said, it's worth noting that in the case of the Raspberry Pi the BGA package of the BCM2835, even were it available in small quantities makes it infeasible to work with at home. For instance to break out the pins from the BGA you're going to need blind vias (OSHpark doesn't support this, plus the pi needs a 6-layer PCB). The RAM is soldered on top of the BCM2835 in a package on package configuration. I found oshstencils just yesterday, it looks great! As you can say, you can make some seriously impressive circuits at low cost with vendors like these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Don't try this at home?" I know it's a throwaway a line, but that's exactly what people should be doing!

<comment><USER5> While schematics are available, board layout for the Pi is not, and I see precisely no reasons for not distributing it openly. Raspberry Pi has nothing to do with open hardware.

The whole system cannot function without the GPU as it's the first component to boot and controls some vital peripherals, and the GPU can only work with a closed-source firmware.

Oh, and before calling this a conspiracy theory, take a look at the sister site of Pi Foundation. That's right: instead of promoting free, open and royalty-free standards like WebM, the Foundation sells licenses for two proprietary and obsolete video encoders. Also, if you want the Foundation to send more documentation to you, they require you to provide a business model. This has nothing to do with education and everything with marketing.

Fortunately, not Beagle Board nor ODROID-X require GPU drivers (or, for that matter, any proprietary code or binaries at all) for regular operation. You'd only need them for rendering accelerated graphics.

If you are looking to develop truly open hardware, take a look at Milkymist One. It isn't cheap, but is worth way more than its cost.

If you are looking for a more sane alternative to Pi, consider buying Texas Instruments Beagle Board or Samsung ODROID-X. Both vendors have released complete documentation for the SoC (except for the graphics processor, described above), and are generally more friendly to open-source community than Broadcom.

[http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is- un...](http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable- for-education/)

<comment><USER3> Licenses for video codecs are sold because people want them, the chip can decode them, and it would obviously be stupid to bake that cost in to the base price when only a subset of users want them. The Foundation doesn't want to see your business model - they don't distribute VideoCore documentation, that is intellectual property of Broadcom and they decide who they share it with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a Welshman, it is nice to see these being manufactured in Wales. Shows that we don't have to outsource our manufacturing to the Far East.

<comment><USER2> The key thing to note is how much of the manufacturing process is completely automated. Due to the huge volumes of the rPi it is cost-effective to automate almost the entire process.

On the other hand, for products expected to sell only in the thousands or tens of thousands it turns out human labor is cheaper. In the rPi's case, notice that it got soldered twice. Once for SMD (surface mount device) parts and once for the larger through-hole parts. In general, if there aren't going to be huge volumes humans will hand solder the through hole parts since a separate wave-soldering machine is needed to do this automatically. As another example take a look at the custom testing jig they shelled out for. That is easily thousands of dollars if not even north of 10K. Again in small volumes it would make more sense for humans to spend the extra effort setting up the board for testing.</comment></comment>


Books to Read in a Lifetime - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8192263011 <comment><USER2> "Mostly anglo-saxon" books to buy on Amazon in a lifetime.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and their selection in Japanese literature is a shite book from Murakami, the most overrated writer ever in Japan media. Good Lord.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree that their Murakami selection is an awful book, and nothing Murakami's written in years has been any good, but he used to (20+ years ago) be a bit better...

[The Amazon tagline, "From the Modern Japanese Master" is certainly pretty cringe-inducing. >< ]

In general the entire list seems very uninspired, like it was generated by someone tallying up blog posts and fan-favorite lists, rather than being an informed opinion by someone that's actually read and thought about a lot of books...

<comment><USER3> > In general the entire list seems very uninspired, like it was generated by > someone tallying up blog posts and fan-favorite lists, rather than being an > informed opinion by someone that's actually read and thought about a lot of > books...

Yeah, I felt the same way. If that's what you got to read before you die, well you might as well die of boredom before you finish reading the books in that list :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...which are modern enough to still be under copyright and thus most profitable to Amazon"?

<comment><USER6> Like Great Expectations and Pride And Prejudice.

Great insight!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disappointed to not see Siddhartha on the list [http://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann- Hesse/dp/0553208845](http://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann- Hesse/dp/0553208845)

<comment><USER8> It's there, number 94

<comment><USER7> For me, #94 shows up as _Lolita (Everyman 's Library (Cloth)) by Vladimir Nabokov (Mar 9, 1993)_. Siddhartha is nowhere to be found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They did a bad job on sci-fi, I think -- while I liked Dune, it certainly isn't the one SF book I'd include.

The Handmaid's Tale is far better, but is listed as "Feminist Speculative Fiction"; if I'd read the category first, I would have skipped the book, but the book is great, along with her other writing.

In a list of 100, I'd probably include 3. The Handmaid's Tale is fine; Snow Crash or maybe a Heinlein or a "golden age of sci-fi" choice.

(Edited to fix incorrect title, thanks)

<comment><USER10> I agree, and you made elsewhere the good point that Dune has one foot in the fantasy realm, without much hard science fiction backing it up.

The Hyperion cantos (Simmons) is sadly not taken seriously by very many authors of top-100 lists. It's usually Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land or Ender's Game or Forever War. And heaven forbid they include Neuromancer or Snow Crash or Altered Carbon, or an eco-scifi book like Stand on Zanzibar or Zodiac.

Dune could be a nod to the classic science fiction aficionados who don't care for any of the newer stuff, who love Asimov, Niven, Clarke, PKD, Bester. Is Heinlein too politically charged, perhaps?

<comment><USER11> Agree with The Hyperion Cantos (commented it as an answer to my post above,) it's been one of the books I've re-read most times. It's a very good book, but somehow a lot of people ignore it, probably due to the fact it's part of a tetralogy (and seems like the last 2 are rubbish... I stopped with the first two: Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, which is what I consider "Hyperion Cantos", though.) I'd rank Altered Carbon _higher_ than Neuromancer. Neuromancer is great and all, but the plot of Altered Carbon was more inspired, almost a nod to classic "noir" writers I like. And I love Stranger in a Strange Land, as pointed above :) Historical note: when the first Spanish translation was commissioned, the publishing firm that did it went bankrupt. Back then (dictatorship) there was a strong censure of books... But editors had to _print the books, whole edition_ and only then the censor would check them. It was deemed as objectionable material.

<comment><USER10> I think the Hyperion cantos would be a single book rather than 4, or a closely joined 2-part novel/sequel, if not for market forces demanding books in the <700-800 page range for popular consumption. There are series that are loosely connected, and then there are series that are practically a single work, like the LotR trilogy. The Hyperion cantos is similar to LotR that way.

It sounds like you heard the Endymion pair are rubbish and avoided reading them. Wherever you heard that, they're not. Look at the ratings on goodreads[1], for instance. You're talking about them as if the Endymion volumes fell off a cliff like Vinge did with Children of the Sky[2]. Not so. The amazon ratings distribution for Endymion is a bit lackluster compared to the other volumes, but still nothing that could be called "rubbish".

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=hyperi...](https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=hyperion)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=zones+...](https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=zones+of+thought)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just scanned the list while buying books for an upcoming long trip away from the Internet and other media (i.e. my annual Alaska boat trip: [http://arachnoid.com/alaska2013](http://arachnoid.com/alaska2013)). I might have selected two from the list.

The problem with the list is it's not a true list of classic, worthwhile books, it's instead populated by books that (a) sell well and (b) are available at the moment from publishers. Those who don't read much, or who are beginning as adult readers, shouldn't be misled by its contents.

Here is a slightly better list, one unfortunately also biased by what's available in the current mass publishing market:

[http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/books-everyone-should- re...](http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/books-everyone-should-read)

But while searching online for quality "classic" or "essential" book lists, I am surprised to say that there's no such readily available list, at least that I can find. Obviously there's also the issue of taste -- one person's list of classics isn't likely to be another's.

</comment><comment><USER13> What's the criteria? This is totally opaque as a list. I agree that some of these books are epic but don't know where the decisions are coming from.

<comment><USER14> From the "Amazon Book Editors".

It's basically a way to add an extremely thin layer of misdirection over what's fundamentally Amazon reminding you that you want to buy books on their site. (i.e. advertising). They're trying to catch as many different people in a carefully crafted "Hmmm, I always meant to read that, maybe I should buy it now to remind me" moment.

How is this is relevant to HN? It's probably not...

<comment><USER6> Jesus. Come on.

This is a list of good books you might want to look at. People who love to read also love to recommend books.

I would not be shocked if the editors at Amazon love to read.

Seriously, people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks more like a popularity contest with an unsurprising correlation to recent screen adaptations.

I half expect Justin Bieber's biography to make the list.

Goodreads and Amazon have become as useless as IMDB when it comes to ratings. Both are prime examples of why the "wisdom of the crowds" is bull. Guess Nicholas Carr was right after all.

</comment><comment><USER16> Surprised that Perfume didn't make the list, or did I miss it browsing on my phone with that weird interface?

<comment><USER17> There's multiple books with _Perfume_ as/in the title. Are you referring to _Das Parfum_?

<comment><USER16> Yes, Süskind's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know it's not meant seriously, but even so, the notion that everyone should read the same set of books in a lifetime is a strange one. If everyone actually did that, it would be a massive duplication of effort. Much better for people to read different books.

<comment><USER19> > _the notion that everyone should read the same set of books in a lifetime is > a strange one_

I think it's intended as a list of suggestions, and anyone else is free to create their own list of suggestions.

> _Much better for people to read different books._

There's so many books out there that it's useful to have some guidance as to which are more likely to be worth your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another good list here: [http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/donald_barthelmes_syllabu...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/donald_barthelmes_syllabus_highlights_81_books_essential_for_a_literary_education_.html)

<comment><USER21> And a better list, too. Not to mention Barthelme's own work is worth checking out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Surprised / pleased that I'm a quarter of the way there (well, 24/100).

Didn't expect quite that much young adult literature - Harry Potter, Limony Snickett, Golden Compass, The Giver (plus Lord of the Rings). All major film franchises (well, The Giver under production).

Was amazed to see The Phantom Tollbooth. One of my favourite books of all time, though I haven't read it since I was a child and honestly have never met another person who'd heard of it!

</comment><comment><USER23> First, the expression "bucket list" always brings to mind Mr. Creosote.

Second, of the books that i have read, I have to say that _Cutting for Stone_ isn't very good; Verghese's nonfiction _The Tennis Partner_ is much better. _The Connections_ has its moments, but maybe not enough for its length.

</comment><comment><USER24> I get why they did this, but it seems like such a waste considering everywhere I've seen this posted people just bitch about a book or a section of books they like not being on the list. But it seems to be working as intended, because I've seen this posted a lot.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm glad Cormac McCarthy is on there, but is _The Road_ better than _Blood Meridian_?

</comment><comment><USER11> Although I'd change some books (actually, quite a lot,) I'm positively surprised by some choices, with books you usually don't see in "best of" lists but which rank high in my personal preferences.

For science fiction I'd change _Dune_... Even though it's a great book and I like it (I even read Herbert Jr.'s sequels... spoiler: don't) I'd pick something "shinier." Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ , or _2001: An Space Odissey_... or go with the weird and pick _Rendezvous with Rama_. Or just _Foundation_. Sci-Fi-wise you can't go wrong with _Foundation_.

Ninja-edit: How could I forget _The Starmaker_ by Olaf Stapledon? Written in the late 40s, I didn't give much for it as Sci-fi goes. I read it in one sitting. Ended with a headache, dizzy and hungry. It was well worth it.

For Murakami, I'd pick instead a relatively unknown book by him: _Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World_. An inception-esque plot-inside-plot book, set in an almost Neuromancer-like setting. I love it.

For Dystopian... Even though I have not read The Giver, just classification- wise I'd have to pick _Shades of Grey_ (Jasper Fforde's book, not to be confused with another, numbered, similarly named book.) It was a thrilling read (I think it's the best novel I've read in the past 3 or 4 years, but well, I don't read that much fiction lately), sadly part of a trilogy waiting to be finished. Beware: once you are done with the book you'd want to go to Britain and tie Fforde to his desk until he is done with the next book.

The books that surprised me though are incredibly well-spotted. I like that _Guns, Germs and Steel_ is there. It's been on my reading list for... 3 years already (I have it, but it's a heavy book so I'm always eager to pick an ebook or thinner material for a commute,) because the theme is so compelling. The Right Stuff is not the usual book you see in a best-of list, but for me, it should be in all these lists. Heck, writing from it is used as example of good writing in _On Writing Well_ (which is surprisingly a very good read).

 _The Long Goodbye_ , by Chandler. Chandler is great, period. Having one of his books in this lists validates other books I'd never consider... Even though you can't have a Chandler and don't have a Hammett. You can't go wrong with a book by Hammett, I'd probably pick _The Maltese Falcon_. A classic.

Of course, there are some books that I'd personally treat to a Bradbury process... _Catcher in the Rye_ and _On the Road_ are two books I was looking forward to reading (not being English-based meant I didn't get to read them on high school) and found dull. I guess read in a different context would have made it different, but I couldn't see all the praise. Personal opinion, though.

<comment><USER26> > Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World

Thas is one of my favorite books of all times. Thank you for recommending it, and I will echo your sentiment to others here on HN to read it. It's one of the few books I've actually reread after saying to myself "I should reread that.."

<comment><USER4> > Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World

 _Totally_ agree with this.

I think Murakami's writing has become repetitive and bloated in the last couple of decades (and even sort of creepy, in a bad way); he basically seems to have been writing on autopilot for many years. It's always a little annoying to see him trotted out as a great author by mentioning his recent stuff.

His early stuff, however, is much better: tighter, more subtle, more interesting, less overwrought. "Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World" is my favorite. It's weird, thoughtful, and sad in way that doesn't feel manipulative or artificial.

<comment><USER27> I agree somewhat, but you should try out his latest book "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage: A novel", though apparently not yet available in English. I just started it and so far it feels very different from his other books, though still very great. (And hard-boiled wonderland is indeed brilliant)

<comment><USER11> I'll keep it in hand for when there is an English translation. I can't read Japanese (except for a handful of go terms like black, white and "first to move".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My biggest gripe about the list: since when did it become acceptable to alphabetize using leading "A" and "The". You're supposed to skip those.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd definitely pick _Foundation_ over _Dune_ , in my personal opinion. I still hold the _Foundation_ series up as the pinnacle of SciFi.

</comment><comment><USER30> Would love to see some more great Russian novels (Dostoevsky, anyone?) in the list instead of many US centric books currently there.

<comment><USER31> No Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Kakfa (I know he's not Russian but still)...the list is far beyond lacking, but what can you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Harry Potter books there. They are good, but then it's about 100 books to read in a lifetime. Just my opinion.

<comment><USER33> I don't know, I've always thought it's one of those series that's worth reading just to be able to discuss with others given how many people have read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The bible is also a good read. If you are into it you could read and study it for a lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER35> Dissapointed that it contains only fiction.

<comment><USER12> It has "All the President's Men" and "A Brief History of Time", nonfiction. ... A quick scan shows that about 1/3 of the titles are either nonfiction or based on real events.</comment></comment>


WiFi 802.22 can cover 12,000 square miles - <AUTHOR> http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/08/01/wifi-802-22-can-cover-12000-square-miles/

<comment><USER2> Two questions- load capacity and upload speeds. If this has a hi cap for users per tower and even decent up speeds, this is a huge deal. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out-</comment>


RIP Captain Jerry Roberts – Bletchley Park Codebreaker - <AUTHOR> http://unbound.co.uk/books/saving-bletchley-park/updates/rip-captain-jerry-roberts-bletchley-park-codebreaker?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=project_mailer%3Anew_update_alert%3ARIP+Captain+Jerry+Roberts+-+Bletchley+Park+Codebreaker <comment><USER2> By chance I happened to meet Captain Jerry Roberts while looking for a room some years ago: their garden (basement) flat in Pimlico had a spare room in what had originally been a cellar under the pavement (sidewalk) in front of the house, which they rented out.

I decided the nearly windowless room was a little dark and dank for my liking, but both he and his wife were very pleasant and it was certainly the most interesting of the many visits to different properties I made at the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note for visitors to London from abroad: It's super easy to get to Bletchley Park from London. I think it took me something like 90 minutes total to get from my hotel in central London to Bletchley park on the train. The staff is well informed and very helpful. They have working replicas of the bombe and colossus machines. It's all very cool. Highly recommended if you have half a day to kill in London.

<comment><USER4> They're also building a replica EDSAC. [http://www.tnmoc.org/special- projects/edsac](http://www.tnmoc.org/special-projects/edsac)

<comment><USER5> [http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/](http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/) Is the website too.

Like has been said it's easy to get to and worth the trip if you're into the history of computer science.

I went a year ago and it was very inspirational and the perfect antidote to startup BS and all that NSA stuff. Around the time i went i was reading a book about the history of cryptography and it was great linking everything together!

It's just a shame Alan was treated the way he was although the letter from Gordon Brown PM in the main museum is definitely worth a look for any LGBT history guru!

<comment> at-fates-hands What was the name of the book you were reading?

One of the better books I read was by David Kahn "The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing"

I love cryptography and am always looking for good books on the subject.

<comment><USER6> The Code Book by Simon Singh is one of the best intros, I think.

It covers a lot more than Bletchley, but it gives Bletchley really good coverage and context.

A friend of mine built an enigma machine based on the description and wiring diagrams in the book: [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19946053957/enigm...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19946053957/enigma- spreadsheet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've just finished reading Connie Willis' "Blackout/All Clear" novels, and I'm very sad there are fewer and fewer people from that age still around. As you can see today, almost all of us have forget the lessons learned from that war and some countries are starting to behave like just before WW2 nowadays.</comment>


Trump needs tech to achieve his vision. But Silicon Valley isn't having it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/24/silicon-valley-fights-donald-trump-peter-thiel-palantir <comment><USER2> The Guardian really should stop speculating, they aren't very good at it.

Here's why Donald Trump won't win the Republican presidential nomination [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/22/donald- trump...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/22/donald-trump-wont- win-republican-presidential-nomination)

Trump won't win. In fact, the US could be on the brink of a liberal renaissance [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/11/trump-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/11/trump- cant-win-election-america-political-earthquake)

Trump won't rule out withdrawal [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/live/2016/jul/07/donald-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/live/2016/jul/07/donald-trump-presidency-withdrawal)

Donald Trump won't be president, says Barack Obama [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/video/2016/feb/17/donald...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/video/2016/feb/17/donald-trump-wont-be-president-says-barack-obama-video)

Don't worry, Donald Trump won't win. But I'll sure miss him when he's gone [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/06/donald...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/06/donald- trump-win-republican-debate)

The Guardian view on America's choice: Don't vote for Trump. Elect Clinton [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/07/the- gu...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/07/the-guardian- view-on-americas-choice-dont-vote-for-trump-elect-clinton)

How does the electoral college vote work – and can it stop Trump? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/18/how-the- elec...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/18/how-the-electoral- college-works-donald-trump)

How Trump won the election: volatility and a common touch [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/how-did- dona...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/how-did-donald-trump- win-analysis)</comment>


Yahoo: Carl Icahn isn't just a tech-ignorant speculator - he's a bad speculator - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/yahoo-on-icahn-seriously-why-would-you-ever-trust-this-spent-doddering-old-man-

<comment><USER2> Holy shit talk about bad data. Icahn is a value investor. _Deep value._ They pull recent investments from no more than 4 years back, which is the wrong timeframe when you're talkinga about this kind of investment strategy.

Icahn buys companies near the brink of bankruptcy and turns them around. That may take years.</comment>


The UK now has the highest health worker deaths in Europe - open-source-ux https://bylinetimes.com/2020/05/04/britain-on-track-for-highest-health-worker-deaths-in-europe/ <comment><AUTHOR> so, clapping not working?</comment>


Dexmo exoskeleton glove lets you touch and feel in VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/24/dexmo-exoskeleton-glove-force-feedback/ <comment><USER2> Wow! That's a lot more clunky that what I had in my mind when I clicked the link.</comment>


Atheists at risk of dying out as religious people are having more babies - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/atheists-dying-out-contraception-claims-study-a7626846.html <comment><USER2> I thought this was laughable when it hit the front page of Reddit a few days ago, but I honestly never thought it would crop up here. The notion of religion as an inherited trait, and the notion that somehow atheism (rather than socioeconomic status) is the driver of less childbirth are utterly bizarre and wrongheaded.

<comment><USER3> religion as an inherited trait is a fact. I wonder what can you have meant.

<comment><USER4> Both you and parent would do better providing citations to back up your assertions. I suspect however that the person you are responding to may have an easier time of it.

<comment><USER2> I'll do that.

Edit: 1 [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745438](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745438)

[http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/beliefs.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/beliefs.aspx)

Those percentages speak for themselves, and they're not screaming "heritability". They speak to a strong environmental element, but that aspect seems to change over time. Mind you, environment is more than just parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> religion is inherited now?

..</comment>


Ask HN: How to use Machine Learning to extract facts from the text? - <AUTHOR> Machine Learning is evolving very quickly. What are the state of the art techniques to extract specific facts from the text automatically?<p>Are there any open source projects focused on this task that you could recommend? <comment><USER3> Facts are simply assertions that have met some burden of proof. Determining that threshold is a subjective exercise, not an objective one. I know you want an algorithm to do this, but there is no sentient algorithm smart enough to do this. So, from an epistemological perspective, you are basically asking - <USER2> are the facts as determined by someone else?

The tragedy of subjectivity is, for most people, some random ranting into a youtube video for 15 minutes about eg. Hillary Clinton constitutes "evidence" sufficient to determine fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> I define facts as structured piece of the information, which I need to extract for specific domain area automatically. I do hope extraction to work automatically in order for the project to make sense.

Eventually it will be measured for precision and recall using human judgement. The quality of that judgement would impact greatly on improvements and sustainability of the algorithm overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What exactly is a fact? There's no easy answer to that question, particularly with natural rather than formal languages. 'Facts' and statements depend on context. The meaning of a natural language statement usually is derived from these layers building on each other:

\- syntax (the structure of a sentence)

\- semantics (the isolated meaning of a sentence)

\- pragmatics (the meaning of a sentence in context)

Anaphora (references to previous sentences or concepts) can be particularly nasty in this context.

Depending on the task at hand chunk parsing could be a good first take at finding relevant phrases from unstructured textual data. There are numerous libraries to accomplish that, for English and other Indo-European languages at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fact for me is structured information extracted from the document. My task is to extract what I can from the documents of the specific domain. I am fine to start with high precision and low recall, I think. Need to try in action and see if relevance of domain specific search and automatic validation can be improved with this approach.

<comment><USER4> In that case the information extraction frameworks Apache UIMA and GATE might be helpful, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Will take a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This system is a commercially oriented fact extraction system

[https://github.com/machinalis/iepy](https://github.com/machinalis/iepy)

that can be trained to get the kind of performance you would see in a text extractor customized by the likes of BBN or Booz Alan Hamilton. You need 20,000 training samples to start getting good results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Looks very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you define a fact?

As far as I understand it symbolic AI back in the 80s was building a massive web of facts or "truths" that would be used to create a general AI. They eventually ended up generating a bunch of contradictions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good question. I don't have good knowledge yet how to model this correctly.

Currently I imagine that for given domain I can create text parser, which would extract facts in standard formats. The example could be: "object predicate subject". And then use facts mapped to documents for relevant domain search and validation of some basic statements in other documents.

Not all statements require validation, I can focus only on those which have high confidence in being parsed correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking for something similar for .pdf academic papers in my field but nothing really useful to automatise the extraction process exists, so the best path is still to extract data manually, homogenise data in a standard protocol, fed ML algos. Once a data protocol becomes a widespread standard and maybe a ISO or similar, there is a chance automated extraction will work at the finest level, as necessary for complex information.

<comment><USER8> On system for extracting information from PDFs is Fonduer[1], which is built on the Snorkel framework from Stanford. It may be worth checking out for your use case. Here's a blog post introducing it [2].

Disclosure: I worked on the project.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05028](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05028)

[2] [https://hazyresearch.github.io/snorkel/blog/fonduer.html](https://hazyresearch.github.io/snorkel/blog/fonduer.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Will look through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looking at SyntaxNet from Google. If there are other candidates worth looking at - please kindly let me know.

[https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/syntaxnet](https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/syntaxnet)

<comment><USER9> Depends on the corpus. If your problem fits a conLL task, you can read lots of papers about it. If you can build on an existing wikipedia entity/relation graph, dictionary, gazzette that's a big boost. For academic research papers, look at citations for your input stream then SVM tf-idf bigrams. If sentiment/quality analysis, that's another tack

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now I'm hoping to extract entities and relations between them to use as facts for relevant domain specific search and validation.

Reading up the articles, YCombinator included: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-natural- languag...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-natural-language- processing/)

<comment><USER9> I think these PIs at UIUC communicate clearly about all the processes necessary (Han wrote a good text on data mining, but probably outdated from 2011):

[http://xren7.web.engr.illinois.edu/www17-StructNet- part1.pdf](http://xren7.web.engr.illinois.edu/www17-StructNet-part1.pdf)

[http://xren7.web.engr.illinois.edu/cikm16-profile.pdf](http://xren7.web.engr.illinois.edu/cikm16-profile.pdf)

Also solr/lucene/elastic indexes are good tools for filtering your inputs and deciding what the unit doc will be (sentence, paragraph, numbered section of research paper etc

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Reading through the papers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the odds for shellshock exploits in 3G radio networks via RF? - <AUTHOR>

assuming (actually I know) lot of the radio network controllers (RNC) and 4G eNodeB which receive the signal from the tower using bash, so what are the odds of injecting code into the network leading to remote execution with shellshock? <comment><USER2> I'd say very slim - The boards within eNodeB/NodeB's that process RF traffic typically do not run a Linux base on them (in my experience) FPGA's and dedicated ASICS are far more likely. You'll typically find it's only the controller board within your base station that as a Linux OS running within, user plane traffic at this point is just traversing the board as normal IP traffic so no interactions with bash are required, there is some signalling plane traffic (mainly LTE) however the majority of that is within the NAS which is eNodeB transparent.

I'd guess the biggest concern would be the MME's processing of signalling messages, as basically all the boards within these systems will generally be Suse/RedHat based. However again there's going to be a very slim chance of bash injection, most of signalling modules are C++ based and don't have a requirement for bash, and even if they did implement bash for some unknown reason there is masses of validation applied to the signalling variables leaving very little room for an injection payload.</comment>


Lyft will offer discounted rides to voters during midterm elections - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/lyft-will-offer-discounted-rides-to-voters-during-midterm-elections/ <comment><USER2> I think while this is probably just a PR stunt, it is one of those PR stunts that actually benefit society in some little way. Right on!

</comment><comment><USER3> What would it take to put election day on a weekend? that simple change alone could alleviate a portion of undue burden on voters at virtually no cost to the tax payers

<comment><USER4> I think the amount of people who are busy on the weekend and would miss voting far outnumbers those who can't make time to vote on a normal day.

Voting hours are normally like a 12 hour window, in cambridge it's from 7am - 8pm [https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/electioncommission](https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/electioncommission)

If you can't do that, then you can do an absentee ballot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We care so little about democracy that this is actually a noteworthy thing.</comment>


AP: Across US, police officers abuse confidential databases - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-across-us-police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases <comment><USER2> _Police officers across the country misuse confidential law enforcement databases to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work, an Associated Press investigation has found._

It won't be long before they start planting DNA samples they collected to frame somebody.</comment>


Ask HN: What issue and project tracking software do you use? - <AUTHOR> I assume most teams use Jira. <comment><USER2> For my work (a startup, to give you sense of scale), we use GitHub Issues + Projects. Projects is still in a little bit of a 1.0 stage but does its job well enough in terms of giving you very bare-bones lanes to funnel issues + priorities.

For my personal projects, I use a combination of GitHub Issues for technical planning (and now I plan on using [https://www.realartists.com/blog/ship-20.html](https://www.realartists.com/blog/ship-20.html), which launched yesterday and has been _fantastic_ in my limited time with it) and Trello for marketing/content planning.</comment>


Cloud and Proud: Salesforce Takes Umbrage at Indiana's 'Religious Freedoms' Act - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2902494/careers/cloud-and-proud-salesforce-takes-umbrage-at-indianas-religious-freedoms-act.html

<comment><USER2> I live in Indiana, a very conservation state, but in a very liberal city (Bloomington). This law is very divisive and makes me feel like I'm living in the 50s and 60s and getting to see how blacks were treated.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the most difficult problem you faced and how you solved it? - <AUTHOR> Hackers... This is the go-to question for most interviewers. I struggle to answer this question and would like to know your reply.
Recently, I was asked this question at an interview, and all I could muster was "I don't remember the most difficult problem - I have worked on lot of tough problems, but it all seemed easy after solving the problem."
Yes, thinking back, I can think of few times I hit roadblocks and come through it step by step. But, in hindsight, it all feels simple - just was tough at the moment. I really feel these as small problems I overcame, not even worth mentioning. Also, I do not even remember the small or big roadblocks hit while working on the problem. Only few of the details of the solution are readily accessible in my mind.
What is the real difficult problem you faced, and how you solved it.. Hope this will help other interviewees like me.
PS: Been thinking about this since reading Elon Musk comment about this as his favourite question: "People [who] really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it," Musk explained. "They know the little details." [0]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/tesla-elon-musk-ask-all-job-applicants-this-interview-question.html <comment><USER2> The question isn't about the problem but the approach taken to solve it. Did you debug it methodically or try-and-error or brute-force? Did you ask others company-internal or external for help? Did you communicate with others so they can escalate or re-delegate (take the burden off your shoulders)? Did you work overtime, all-through-the-night or make other sacrifices?</comment>


Ask HN: Existing startup directly competes with mine, now what? - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on my latest startup project for a few months now.  During this time, I have been researching the market heavily, but never found a company that did more or less the same thing as me.  Now I have the option to completely revamp my product, or tweak it to cover the weaknesses of this existing startup.  What would you do in this situation? <comment><USER2> Focus on your users.

Listen, iterate, and build something that at least a few of them LOVE. I'd say that startups don't have the luxury of focusing on their competition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great advice. Its easy to lose sight of this simple fact when you're juggling so much at once, but this absolutely makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If the market is big enough, there should be room for them to be Coke and for you to be Pepsi. Or preferably, vice versa.

If the market isn't big enough, there should be room for one of you to be Microsoft. Preferably you and not them.

Why do you think they'll beat you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually don't think they'll beat me, but their established user base does create just yet another set of obstacles for my company. Fortunately, I have a solid business model where they appear to have none at all. As an early stage startup, I can't see them being able to weather the economic storm for long without any clear revenue stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can contact them, talk about what you're doing, and see if there's a possibility of partnership. If you're both startups in a true sense of the word, you might benefit more from such collaboration rather than competition.

<comment><USER5> Don't waste time on partnerships with potential competitors unless you just want to get hired by them. At best you're giving them a roadmap to make you irrelevant. Until you have users/revenue you really have nothing to offer but ideas to steal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's good news. Anyone who doesn't have competitors isn't in a very good market.

My start-up has a dozen competitors, ranging from start-ups to billion dollar conglomerates.

<comment><USER7> Or, they were pioneers in a market that didn't exist yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Being the _only_ or being the _first_ of a type is a minor factor in ultimate success. If the idea/market is good, it will support multiple offerings.

So whenever discovering a real or potential competitor, learn from what they do well if you can, but don't be discouraged.</comment>


Brain researchers warn that lack of sleep is a public health crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/go-to-bed-brain-researchers-warn-that-lack-of-sleep-is-a-public-health-crisis/2019/01/24/bbc61562-0a1b-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html <comment><USER2> To prevent dead links, here's an archive copy: [https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.washingtonpost.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/go-to-bed-brain-researchers-warn-that-lack-of-sleep-is-a-public- health-crisis/2019/01/24/bbc61562-0a1b-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html)</comment>