Anyone know of an app that provides daily check marks? - <AUTHOR>

After reading about Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret ( http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret ) I have been interested in using this in many areas of my life. It is extremely effective, especially for things I only want to spend a few minutes on per day, but I know if I just spend those few minutes I will make long term progress.
Examples of things I want to try to do every day:
 - Practice Guitar (at least 30m)
 - Learn a new joke or 'bar trick'
 - Exercise (at least 30m)
 - Clean one area of my apartment
 - Write a letter/email to one person I care about
And so on. The tricky thing is that I ran out of a good way to track my daily checkmarks. The best system I have tried so far is to use stickers on a calender, but the cognitive overhead of "ok, a blue star == learn a joke" is annoying.
Does anyone know of a web app that can handle this for me? <comment><USER2> I know Joe's Goals gets mentioned frequently for Seinfeld's "Don't break the chain" method:

<http://www.joesgoals.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks PERFECT for my needs, thanks!

EDIT: New startup idea: a startup that helps people find out about startups. I'm at the point where I assume any 'simple' idea I have probably exists, but finding it can be difficult (I spent about half an hour google-fu'ing and didn't find joesgoals)

<comment><USER3> Shameless plug: my website finds you similar websites. Find one you like, find them all.

<http://moreofit.com/search/?q=Joesgoals.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.quantter.com> we are not live yet (should be very soon for alpha and beta in sept.). One of our visualizations will be "dontbreakthechain".

We have exactly what you describe in mind (does not mean we will be the best app to nail it, so please let us know what you think critics etc. so that we can iterate & improve).

Tags: Seinfeldprodsecret; 10000hoursrule; deliberatepractice; QuantifiedSelf; selftracking; dailyroutine <http://blog.quantter.com/>

At the moment just use a microsyntax on twitter for instance like this: #guitar:30mn or #newjoke:1 or #letter:1 (those are what we call quantts=atom of human activity) <http://blog.quantter.com/syntax>

You will have a profile page eg <http://quantter.com/Goosey> with a calendar to visualize your Quantts with a regularity index number (to tell how regular you are in breaking or not your chain).

Depending on where you are based you may also want to participate in QuantifiedSelf meetups? <http://quantified-self.meetup.com/>

<comment><USER4> You can also check <http://www.Goalmafia.com>. The developer from GoalTribes work together with @curiousjordy on Goalmafia

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://streak.ly> is in beta right now, but it's exactly that.

and for a shameless plug: I use made <http://101in365.com> to handle goals over the course of a year with the ability to track them in smaller increments (i.e. daily).

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://dontbreakthechain.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Click-friendly version of link: [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds- productivity-se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity- secret)

</comment><comment><USER7> For iphone, you can use : [http://itunes.apple.com/app/dont-break-the- chain/id313567772...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/dont-break-the- chain/id313567772?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.rootein.com/>

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the mention Vijay. Just to add, Rootein also sends out reminders via email/Twitter DMs when it finds you slacking :) We have recently launched a Facebook app (<http://apps.facebook.com/rootein>) for Rootein. You can track your habits/routines from within Facebook. We just won't give you any excuses to slack :)</comment></comment>


Why to avoid Google's IPO (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google-watch.org/googles-ipo.html

<comment><USER2> This is a troll, just look at the bottom right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah good spot, I missed that. I just thought this seemed a lot like the usual "anti-hype" posts, and considered it interesting that occasionally the hype is right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.google-watch-watch.org/></comment>


Steps to better code - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/isaacandsuch/steps-to-better-code <comment><USER2> Good tips in here. I've found that other than not knowing how, the next biggest reason people don't write good code is that they consider doing so to be too costly. It's simple to justify that viewpoint if you just define all code other than the way the programmer feels like writing it as prohibitively difficult. Everything becomes an insignificant nit or "not worth doing right now" and the result is a death by 1000 cuts. It's easy to use these ideas as a shield against being diligent and paying attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some good basic tips, but...

The most difficult problems in relationships are having to repeat the story of how you met??</comment>


Should there be a HTTP verb for 'list' or 'search'? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> AFAIK (from my very small understanding of web standards) it's proposed but not yet a standard.

[https://annevankesteren.nl/2007/10/http- methods](https://annevankesteren.nl/2007/10/http-methods) [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5323/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5323/)

And it would work like a get but with post arguments.

<comment><USER2> Apologies, looks like the w3c proposal is similar but not the same

[https://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/wiki/Proposal_for_HTTP_QUERY_Ver...](https://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/wiki/Proposal_for_HTTP_QUERY_Verb)

QUERY rather than SEARCH

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How would it be different from `GET` ?

<comment><USER2> Using post parameters with a GET verb is generally frowned upon and passing search arguments via url parameters is problematic at times (length, special characters, encoding etc).</comment></comment>


Clojure Conj 2018 Keynote – Rebecca Parsons - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1lqZcnamAQ <comment><AUTHOR> "I'm biased. You're biased. The data is biased."

The scientific method is currently the best tool humans have to combat bias. Humans generally suck at applying it, even when they try really hard. Can we build an AI that out-performs humans at applying it and have that AI analyze other AI systems before we act on their results?</comment>


Simple, mass-producible Covid-19 vaccine safe and effective in monkeys - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.046375v1 <comment><AUTHOR> A general audience summary of this has previously been submitted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968345)

I thought it deserved some more attention, because the more elaborate vaccine candidates seem less likely to become available worldwide as quickly.</comment>


Ask HN: What have you built? (not software related) - <AUTHOR> I guess hackers like to just build stuff. What have you built other than sotware? Maybe a crib for your new born child, maybe a house, maybe a bike etc... <comment><USER3> About a year ago, I spent a weekend building a letterpress. It's turned into a fun hobby.

Printmaking is much more difficult than I'd have expected. One of the biggest challenges is maintaining a clean, inkless field. It's so easy to get ink on your hands, at which point it's nearly impossible to pick up a sheet of paper without smudging it before you're within three feet of the press itself. Registration (proper alignment) is a challenge as well, but is manageable. Working slowly and deliberately is difficult but certainly rewarding (though the reward here is spending an hour with lacquer thinner cleaning off the type, but I digress).

Even so, it feels great to take a Saturday evening away from the Internet, sit down with a set of lead 72pt Franklin Gothic, a brayer and ink, and print a few runs of something that strikes you as amusing at the moment.

Here are a couple photos from the last experiment:

Printed: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/cscotta/5018870586/lightbox/>

Letterpress: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/cscotta/3825133446/>

(See the "luck" tag for a couple in-process shots)

<comment><USER4> Anyone else likes to see which books people have when the bookshelf is not the subject?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I built a time fountain. I became obsessed with making one after seeing this video. I knew _absolutely nothing_ about making circuits, so I spent the large part of a summer troubleshooting all sorts of minor things (it took forever just to get a blinking light, without toasting it, for example), scrounging for parts at Radioshack (what a rip-off!) and various online catalogs. I bought enough parts to make 10, but after making 1 of them, the thrill was over.

Anybody I show this thing to is instantly amazed. About 10% of people can actually figure out how it works. And, in general, if they don't understand it before having it explained to them, they won't understand it afterword (though they will claim to "get it"). Maybe I'm just not good at explaining the strobe effect. When people first see it, they momentarily believe that I've managed to create some sort of anti-gravity device. Then when they see it going backwards, they sort of lose grip of reality for a moment. It's amazing.

My time fountain kicks the original one's ass. Unlike the one in the video, mine does a full 30fps and has analog adjustment knobs for forwards, backwards, etc. It doesn't relay on a "drip detection" circuit, but rather just two 555 timers. I freakin' love the thing.

Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvY7NGncCgU> Note: I didn't make the one in the video, and this wasn't my idea. I simply implemented the same concept myself with various improvements.

<comment><USER6> That is awesome, never seen that idea before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A monorail.

500 Feet long, held two passengers, guts were a rewired electric wheelchair.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/espressobuzz/5008514139/in/set-...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/espressobuzz/5008514139/in/set-72157623078910391/)

<comment><USER8> Ah....Burning Man.

Loved this, was a very very ambitious project, sadly I didn't get to see it working. :-(

In the same vein I made this this year:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bendelarre/5010762637/in/set-72...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bendelarre/5010762637/in/set-72157624511065185/)

A 16x16 array of RGB LEDs on which we ran animations generated by the community on a website. (Yes, I know, its still software related...I can't help myself!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I built a 50-watt ham radio transmitter (copper chassis and all) with an 807 final. And an allied radio receiver kit. And later a VFO kit to drive the transmitter. And a Q-Multiplier and a BFO for the 1927 Zenith radio from my dad so I could hear tones in CW. Then, from scratch, when I got my General Class license, I built an AM modulator on a 14-inch steel chassis to get on AM. Going almost digital, I built a two-tube 12as7 W9TO keyer for morse code for the above rig. And an antenna system with two 45 foot poles about 180 feet apart to put up three dipoles. And I cannot count the number of antennas that I have built over the years at my various residences.

Later, I built one of the second wave of the Altair computers, and actually had one or two consulting gigs from that.

And, to brag a little, I pointed my daughter, to a QST article on a code practice oscillator, and she built it with almost no supervision when she was in high school.

I built, from a kit, one or three of the amateur packet radio kits, and ran a radio BBS for too long a time. (You see, the internet is just ham radio 2.0, but none of you get that fact, but i digress)

I built (strictly was architect for) a medical information system that gathered electrocardiograms from patients bedsides, transmitted them via telephone to a datacenter near Chicago, which returned an english-language report to the hosptial in ten minutes or less. (This one is cheating a bit, as a large component of this was software.)

But by far and away most of the stuff I have built is software.

Now, my gig is to break software, but that is off-topic. (Hint--you sometimes need to write software to break other software.)

<comment><USER9> Oh, yes--I built an accounting system in RPG-III. Many today do not consider this to be software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My dad owns a fab shop, so I grew up making stuff.

I was into cars for a long time. In college, I built strut/tie bars and sold them on the web. I turboed my car and built the downpipe and the charge piping. I also made and modified numerous parts for the car and friends' cars (suspension parts, wiring, brackets, blah blah). I also reverse engineered the ECU running the engine and wrote an engine management system for it which required some hardware integration (that count? <http://benogle.com/projects/bre> ).

All of my furniture that was not upholstered (no couch, etc) until last year was built by me in high school.

I finished the basement in my house which required making a bunch of stuff at previously mentioned fab shop. Even for general house maintenance I often ended up making some small part(s) at the shop (i.e. sprinkler system install, fixing the garage lean, etc).

</comment><comment><USER11> Full Size Airliner cockpit (Bombardier CRJ):

1 PC 1 Matrox TripleHead(3 monitors-View), 1 Matrox G200(3 monitors- Instruments)

Built some electronic boards to control LEDs, Switches, Potentiometers for Throttle, Yoke, Overhead panel, Central console, etc...

Nice project if you have the time....

<comment><USER12> > Full Size Airliner cockpit (Bombardier CRJ):

pictures, please?

So many amazing projects in this thread!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bookshelves, an entertainment center, lots of medieval armor, several homebrew computers (I'm putting the finishing touches on an 8085 now: saundby.com), a couple of fish tanks, my computer desk, a parallelogram mount for my binoculars, several telescopes, including the primary optics.

Building is just another part of hacking. If you asked me what I'd modded, I'd have an even larger list. I originally got into electronics and computers because it was a cheaper hobby than model railroading. I couldn't afford railroading stuff from the hobby shop, but I could always find a broken radio to get parts out of for electronics projects, and make money repairing radios and TVs until I could afford a microprocessor. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> My friend Ben and I built a piece of art that responds to fluctuations in magnetic fields in the room to move around ferrofluid.

<http://jakemauer.com/work/fields/>

I also built a T-Shirt with EL wire that sync'd to Ableton Live

<http://jakemauer.com/work/electroluminescent-dj/>

<comment><USER5> What is that instrument, that somebody keeps putting their hand infront of, detecting? Sometimes it goes up when the hand goes near, and sometimes it doesn't.

Very cool project. I think if somebody made an installation / toy that did extreme looking ferrofluid stuff in response to people touching around it (like those glass spheres with electricity arcs tracing all around), it'd have commercial value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> House rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Link to one of the more epic episodes: <http://www.gallerytungsten.com/archives/000145.php>

</comment><comment><USER16> My first hack, I was 11 : a tape mixer with two walkmans, a linear potentiometer and a merged audio output :)

<http://image.bayimg.com/dapehaacf.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER17> Syzygryd, a 2.5 ton fire breathing collaborative musical instrument. With a lot of help from friends. <http://www.syzygryd.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> When I was a kid I hacked apart my NES controller. I connected wires to each of the leads, and then made some simple contraptions that would connect two leads when activated. The main one was a jumping board my dad helped me with. I also made a punching thing you strapped to your arm. I didn't know how to solder properly so I don't think it all worked right at any one time, but it was cool.

Still waiting for royalties from the Wii :)

</comment><comment><USER19> If art counts, I have sketched many portraits, did some oil paintings (nothing to boast of) and also composed a few songs in an unreleased album:)

</comment><comment><USER20> 2 boats, a guitar, some furniture, and a race car. I'd like build another boat soon, it has been a while.

<comment><USER21> How did you learn about building the guitar? I'd love to see pics/see design plans. Electric or acoustic?

<comment><USER20> Also there are books, googling around there is plenty. I actually have a store near my house that supports home built guitars and the guy there was really helpful, but that doesn't scale at all.

<http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/links.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I built two CNC machines. The first one essentially from scratch components: bearings, plates and beams. And a second higher performance machine by converting a manual machine to servo control. Hardware is fun.

<comment><USER12> Pictures?

One of my babies :) :

[http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/windmill/17_sep_bill...](http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/windmill/17_sep_billet.jpg.html)

<comment><USER22> That is a nice machine. I have been trying to convince myself that if I want to build a custom set of cabinets that should build a 4x8 router to make the whole job easier :)

Yes my web page is lame and written by hand 7 years ago, but it does have a few pics.

<http://www.crcarlson.com/Personal/cnc1/cnc1.html>

<http://www.crcarlson.com/Personal/cnc2/cnc2.html>

<comment><USER12> Those are very slick little machines that you've built there.

I've been busy converting this one off-and-on for the last two years, it's going so slow because the machine is in a warehouse almost 200 miles from here:

<http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/machines/dscf1225.jpg.html>

But it's actually getting there, just a few more wires and it will be completely modernized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An epic beard: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/teich/4828396989/>

<comment><USER24> That beard is almost as epic as Katie Holmes.

<comment><USER23> I didn't realize Katie Holmes was all that epic...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I was (more) young and foolish, I rebuilt the turbodiesel engine in a 1983 Mercedes 300SD. The day after we got it all back together two friends and I drove it over a thousand miles to a wedding in Philadelphia. In hindsight, this was really stupid. It turned out fine, though.

<http://douglassims.org/300sd/>

<comment><USER26> I stuck the engine from a 300SD into my 67 chevy pickup.

<http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=241922>

My next trick will be to transplant a modern variable vane turbocharger onto it and develop a fly by wire throttle and vane control system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I recently built an arcade cabinet, which houses a PC running MAME so that I can play lots of arcade games.

I also built the desk on which my workstation currently resides. I couldn't find a desk that (a) looked decent and (b) was enormous, so I designed a desk that satisfied both and built it.

</comment><comment><USER12> A windmill, a house, a car, a 3D mill / plasmacutter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you build the house from ground up? How long did that take you?...Lately I have been reading up about building a small house using shipping containers.

<comment><USER12> Actually, it's two houses, one in Canada and one in NL.

The latter was a rebuild, an old farm house, the one in Canada was from 7' in the ground to two and a half storeys.

The one here in NL was a major project, mostly because I did it all by myself and it's a brick building. It's a beautiful little house in a very quiet spot of the country, with a fair bit of ground around it.

It took me two years to get it all done.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should write about the whole experience with pictures. I am getting more serious about building a house from the ground up. Two years is a great time frame. Share pictures if any.

<comment><USER12> I sent you mail.

Building a house is absolutely doable, fixing one up with a rich history in a way is more fun, but comes with more restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A working CO2 laser, with enough power to char wood and cut paper and thin plastic.

</comment><comment><USER28> Together with friends I renovated a 4-floor house, which was unhabited. Now we have a cool house with garden to live and work in, oil-, coal- and gas-free heating and solar panels for below-the-average rent.

</comment><comment><USER29> I built a device to catch the mail that comes through the slot in my front door. It had previously been falling on the floor and driving me crazy.

One day I came across this nice product, [http://www.amazon.com/SNAIL-SAKK- Mail-Receptacle-Slots/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/SNAIL-SAKK-Mail- Receptacle-Slots/dp/B002W5GI2U), and it seemed more than possible to make my own. So, using a fabric shopping bag from a local store, some Velcro and a sewing kit I managed to put my own together in a couple of hours. It works great! :)

<comment><USER30> What happens if the stack overflows?

<comment><USER29> The "sack" holds quite a bit of mail, but the worst case scenario is that the mailman shoves the overflow stuff in there aggressively and the velcro gives way causing the mail to fall on the floor again like before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Built a RFID collection system using RFID reader plus mico Linux computer. Ok, semi-software related since I needed to write the software to control the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am currently building a peer to peer network of time capsules: <http://www.paperinternet.org>

</comment><comment><USER33> Semi-recent projects: Bookshelf, desk, plug station, coat hanger antenna, hollowed out book.

My grandfather was a carpenter and when he passed, he gave our family his tools. We always have lots of wood and woodworking tools around so that's my preferred medium (when all you have is a hammer....).

</comment><comment><USER34> A 6" Dobsonian reflector telescope. Highly recommend it

<comment><USER12> You ground your own lenses? Wow! Patience of a saint.

<comment><USER35> Reflectors use mirrors; !lenses.

I've ground a few too; Polished fewer and never completed any :)

<comment><USER34> Congrats! I can't imagine what it'd be like to actually make my own optics. Probably tough to get it to the right optical tolerances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, I'm very impressed with your projects. If you're a redditor, /r/DIY loves to see these type of projects, and if you blog, consider submitting to Make Magazine, or Hack-A-Day, or any of the various other DIY blogs. It's great to see such creativity.

</comment><comment><USER37> I helped build a house out of spare wood for a family friend. It was really exciting to see it come together and to think that this wasn't just a random side project, but something that would be lived in and greatly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER38> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/kilohanadesign/page2/>

bunch of weirdness, but my hobby is building sprayed in facecoat glass fiber reinforced concrete pieces.

Most of my newer pieces are 3/4" thick and have EPS foam cores. My first attempt is the solid grey double sink in the bathroom which weighs at least 250lbs, I thought there had to be a better way, and there was. The desk with the imac on it is 28x60 and weighs 90lbs.

Sorry about all the other random pictures, especially if you get to see t-shirt diaperman on the beach.

</comment><comment><USER39> i built a software radio (or something a lot like one, involves software, but the device was soldered) it was quite fun, just google "zetasdr" or the gnu radio project, or softrock sdr .... have fun!

</comment><comment><USER40> A bed, a blanket chest and lots of other smaller projects. Woodworking helped me realize that I really like building things, so I've stuck with that on the software side.

</comment><comment><USER41> A root cellar, 8'×8'

[http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=204054&...](http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=204054&id=733326210)

</comment><comment><USER42> Mostly bits of furniture - bookcases and chairs for my daughter, various little toys like balance boards and beams, kitchen cabinets.

Oh, and soap. I make soap - does that count? :)

</comment><comment><USER43> We're moving to a smaller apartment soon so I'm building a platform for our bed (king size) this weekend, so we can get more storage under it. Should be fun!

</comment><comment><USER44> a human sized hamster wheel

it's a long story, to do with a church funding something, but i was the eventual designer of it despite being an intern, then went and built it in my own time one weekend. was fucking heavy and never used it, just donated my time to that client

</comment><comment><USER45> hmm: -a goban that I still use sometimes -a water filter for my turtles -an helicopter with Lego and the engine found in the broken typewriter (no, it can't fly BUT the helices turns :D) -a laser gun with the laser found in my DVD driver -my BED ! :D <-most proud and if "art" counts, I've made with folks from my startup this 4-page comics <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5247526/Nouveaux%20soleils.zip> !

</comment><comment><USER46> Recently...a tortilla press. Not much, but workable.

</comment><comment><USER47> I just built something that builds something

The makerbot.

</comment><comment><USER48> My Self-Esteem

<comment><USER49> "That's beautiful, man." - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I built a side for my POS popup camper. Metal, glue, ants...

</comment><comment><USER51> Acoustic panels for my home studio!

<http://www.guitarwithrob.com/images/studio2.png></comment>


Show HN: Serverless WebSocket chat - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fanout.io/2016/09/29/serverless-websocket-chat/ <comment><USER2> I had expected something cool with webRTC based on the title. While pushpin and stack are interesting, this is anything but serverless, especially since you'll still need to configure these "serverless" hosts. I wish "serverless" as a term for PaaS frameworks would go away already, I don't think anyone should/would consider, for example SalesForce a "serverless" development option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a better term to use to describe the concept of programming a service with short-lived executable blocks? Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) comes to mind, although to me that implies a third party host.

What's kind of funny is old web servers used to work almost exactly this way, running a program in isolation for every incoming request (CGI scripts anyone?), but that was well before the rise of REST and intentionally stateless development, so it didn't get a buzzword. We've come full circle.

<comment><USER2> CGI 2.0?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> le-mark Queue the "serverless" haters. Guys, it's a real term, that seeks to describe a real and growing phenomenon. No one wants to read stupid pedantitry that contributes nothing to the conversation.

[http://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html](http://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

<comment><USER3> I'm starting to think these people don't really have an interest in changing their views. If it wasn't this it would be about something else and they'd be making snarky drive-by comments on someone else's ShowHN.

<comment><USER4> Oh they do, I see it. To most people, serverless doesn't mean no server, because that is absurd. It really means "server I don't have to admin". Maybe adminless would be more appropriate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author of stack here.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the project.

see: [https://github.com/Stackvana/stack](https://github.com/Stackvana/stack)</comment>


The Best Way yet to Talk to Aliens, If They're out There (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-best-way-yet-to-talk-to-aliens-if-theyre-out-there <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it make sense to communicate minimal intelligence and willingness to communicate in the most robust possible way, such as:

\- simultaneously transmit on a lot of frequencies from LF through light

\- modulate a minimal "intelligent" message in a wide variety of ways (frequency, amplitude, pulse, phase, polarization, etc.) and also unmodulated (simple carrier).

\- assume widely different time scales, so the message should be sent so that it takes 1 second, one minute, one hour, and one day

\- alternate sending/receiving on the same lock-step

The goal is to get another intelligent life form to realize we are intelligent and trying to communicate, but there appear to be tons of assumptions baked into the approach used in the article.

<comment><USER3> Here is something I came up with last time thread like this was around:

While writing this I though of algorithm that might work better to maximize amount of civilizations you reach. This would require a relatively stable space transmitter, or series of coordinated ground transmitters:

1\. Pick a set of stars S that potentially can support advanced civilization and are located closely in a region of space (so you do not have to reposition telescope a lot).

2\. Start sending signals primer signals to stars. For signal S[x], temporal difference between S[x] and S[x+1] would a set amount shorter than temporal distance between S[x-1] and S[x]. Primer signals are short and cheap, transmitting entire Wikipedia should take way longer (Weeks, months, maybe years?).

3\. Once time between primer signals reaches some threshold start transmitting data set.

Idea is that this will give advanced civilization potentially listening a chance to prepare to receive full transmission, while avoiding costly repeats of big data set.

<comment><USER4> To get a sense of available band-width, old-style TV was 512 x 480 interlaced, so 30 full frames per second, three colours, with about 6 bit resolution per colour, or about 0.5 MB/s. Wikipedia is about 23 GB (text only, including markup). So about 12 hours to transmit the whole thing. Much larger with images, of course.

[I did the calculation this way because back in about 1990 I had the brilliant idea of a satellite that broadcast the sum total of human knowledge to everyone on Earth, and figured out that a single TV channel could basically handle it on a 24 hour cycle, based on what we knew then. Which just goes to show how stupid brilliant ideas can look a short time later...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory XKCD about communicating with aliens: [http://xkcd.com/1377/](http://xkcd.com/1377/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is such an old article that the service (Lone Signal) linked in the text is no longer operational.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found a slightly more comprehensible translation of that Vedic quote:

        Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
        He from whom all this great creation came.
        Whether his will created or was mute,
        The Most High seer that is in highest heaven,
        He knows it - or perchance even He knows not.[1]

[1] [http://www.creationmyths.org/rigveda-10-129-indian- creation/](http://www.creationmyths.org/rigveda-10-129-indian-creation/)

</comment><comment><USER8> CosmicOS is a nice idea for what to put in a message: [http://cosmicos.github.io/](http://cosmicos.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Its my opinion that they are out there, their communications with us have already been very, very extensive. This guy is a good place to start researching the phenomenon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbdJMl0H64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbdJMl0H64)

</comment><comment><USER10> If there were aliens that understood the "hailing message" and did not respond, and if we were to assume there was a message that would get a response, then how to figure that out? How to get better at sending messages when getting no response?

<comment><USER11> Tell them we learned how to cheaply travel faster than light using this one weird trick? That other interstellar civilizations _hate_ us?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makes me think of the Golden Record we sent I think in the 70's Reference: [http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html](http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> > Through our website, users can send a 144-character text message for free

Twitter++

<comment><USER14> More like Twitter++++.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Command-line Version of the SeatGeek Web App (with Venue Maps) - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/seatgeek-command-line

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is quite clever, particularly the ASCII art stadium maps. Color me impressed.

<comment><USER3> Thank you! Would be happy to post more details about how it works if that post isn't clear enough. The source should be readable enough, but it's a bit messy (I'll blame it on the hackathon time constraint).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seatgeek is seriously amazing. More people should be using it IMO.

</comment><comment><USER5> On a related note, seatgeek's main site seems to be having problems getting ticket prices currently

<comment><USER6> Maybe that's b/c 80% of all websites on Earth are having problems right now?

(Exaggerating, but you get the point...)</comment></comment>


You Should Worry About This Evernote Update, Even If You Don't Use It - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/evernote-update_us_5772cce9e4b0d1f85d478091 <comment><AUTHOR> Can someone recommend a solid competitor where you can buy a lifetime membership? Or a self hosted option that rivals it in features?</comment>


Training a deep neural net on a quantum computer - <AUTHOR> What happens when you train a deep recurrent neural network on a quantum computer. I wonder if you get consciousness...
Roger Penrose has hypothesized that consciousness could be a result of quantum effects in neurons..
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_consciousness <comment><USER2> 1\. There are hundreds of hypotheses about our brains. Neuroscientists barely understand our brain, so conjecture about what our brains do is just that - conjecture.

2\. Quantum computers basically only offer a runtime speedup for optimization. It'll probably help train neural nets faster, but that's not going to help you in any other area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quantum computers and AI seem like they're made for each other, because both depend on optimization algorithms. Now, whether our current AI algorithms can be sped-up greatly by quantum computers, or we'll need to find new AI algorithms that are sped-up by them, we'll have to see. I'm sure Google will try to port DeepMind to its own universal quantum computer in the next few years.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Bringing some funky extreme non-linearity into A.I training would be interesting. However, the models would probably be very different than what we have today.

Who else are truly building quantum computers other than D-Wave and IBM?</comment></comment>


The Personal Computer Is Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=39163 <comment><USER2> ... unless you need killer graphics, write code, run Linux, have concerns about security, ... I can accept that the PC is dead FOR CONSUMERS, as they've been buying way more than they need for years.</comment>


How I learned to stop worrying and love the schema - <AUTHOR> http://blog.confluent.io/2015/05/19/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-schema-part-1/

<comment><USER2> The guys at Snowplow Analytics are really into applying schemas to event streams, and will write or bang on about it at any opportunity:

[http://snowplowanalytics.com/blog/2014/07/11/on-the- benefits...](http://snowplowanalytics.com/blog/2014/07/11/on-the-benefits-of- configurable-schemas/)

[http://snowplowanalytics.com/blog/2014/05/15/introducing- sel...](http://snowplowanalytics.com/blog/2014/05/15/introducing-self- describing-jsons/)

[https://github.com/snowplow/iglu](https://github.com/snowplow/iglu)

I think there's a lot to be said for knowing for sure what shape your data is.

</comment><comment><USER3> My experience might be insignificant.

I've been working with several APIs, both XML and JSON, and I'm yet to see an example where a schema have helped me writing an automated parser. Validating the response/request? Sure.

Maybe I did not have the right tools, maybe I lacked the knowledge, but the fact is, I've been writing such parsers by hand. I'm vaguely aware that there are various C++ parser generators from XML schemas, but I could not use those because of license/compatibility issues.

I suspect it would be possible to write a schema->parser converter using meta- programming, but how many languages are capable of that without huge amounts of pain? I could probably do that in Python or LISP, but not in some other language.

And I have not seen a JSON schema being used... anywhere?

<comment><USER2> Someone sent me a WADL file the other day:

[http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl/](http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl/)

It didn't take long to find a tool which would generate a client library from it.

Three caveats:

Firstly, i was working in Java; WADL originated at Sun, so there are Java tools for it, but i doubt any other language has support.

Secondly, i don't think it really saved me much time. Hand-coding a JSON API client isn't exactly difficult. The main advantage i can see would be in dealing with an evolving API, where the implementer of the API can continually update a WADL file which clients can use in their build process to stay up to date.

Thidly, the generated code had a bug, and blew up on one of the data types returned from the API!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A good way to enforce schema backwards compatibility is to have something like a pre-commit hook or an auto-revert that triggers when the compatibility check fails during the build of your schema class library (assuming Java).

In addition, consistent use of schemas is also essential to operating something like Kafka audit:

[http://www.slideshare.net/JonBringhurst/kafka-audit-kafka- me...](http://www.slideshare.net/JonBringhurst/kafka-audit-kafka-meetup- january-27th-2015)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm, not sure I agree that the solution is always to use a schema... In general, yes, it's a good idea. However, it seems to me that, in this particular example, the correct format could be determined by the device_id in the JSON formatted text. That is, the date format when device_id=123 is X, the date format when device_id=watch_345is Y, etc... If there are a small number of device_ids then it's a workable solution, maybe even preferable if the amount of data to be transferred needs to be minimized.

However, once JSON was used, then I would almost certainly have put in a schema/format/version field in a header.

</comment><comment><USER6> Two things:

1) The people on the "temp-o-meter watch team" are all retarded

2) He fails to show a schema that will solve this, and I seriously do not know what he's talking about. What would fix this:

 _" Had this company been using schemas, the watch and phone teams could have simply reused the same schema, avoiding the need for the watch team to reinvent the wheel, "_

Given that the different languages are used [1], what kind of magic fixes this? Without requiring all the parts to support something common technology I might add..

[1] if not, there wouldn't be a problem

</comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing prettier than a pretty ERD!</comment>


VTA: An Open, Customizable Deep Learning Acceleration Stack - <AUTHOR> https://tvm.ai/2018/07/12/vta-release-announcement.html <comment><AUTHOR> The Versatile Tensor Accelerator (VTA) is an extension of the TVM framework designed to advance deep learning and hardware innovation.

\- docs [https://docs.tvm.ai/vta/](https://docs.tvm.ai/vta/) \- techreport [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04188](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04188)

</comment><comment> kun-zh looks good!</comment>


Can one explain schemes to biologists? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html <comment><USER2> There seems to be a fair amount of reservation or even animosity towards maths in many areas:

* among the general public people feel it is acceptable to admit lack of basic skill or understanding in mathematics (at times even arithmetics) whereas they would be ashamed to admit it with respect to reading or writing,

* popular science books are often written without a single formula (and according to a preface in one popular science book editors and publishers generally reject a book that tries to sneak some in, their apparent justification being that each formula halves the sales),

* and it turns out that even STEM scientists, in this case biologists, appear to have gaps in their understanding of basic mathematics like analysis and algebra.

I'm very curious as to what might be behind this isolation of mathematics. Bad teachers? Mathematicians' own disregard for applications? Some sort of self- perpetuating myth about inaccessibility of maths for the common person?

<comment><USER3> It is also shocking how mathematicians have huge gaps in their basic knowledge of cell biology. What can be done to help mathematicians learn relevant applications? Or even accept that applications merit more than an occasional momentary thought, and that only to wave off a field as trivial?

<comment><USER4> Mathematics and biology are not interchangeable like that. One is specific knowledge, other (at least the parts we're talking about here) is mental tools and models, which are useful for every field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lior Pachter had a blog post about this incident ( _The two cultures of mathematics and biology_ ): [https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/the- two-culture...](https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/the-two-cultures- of-mathematics-and-biology/)

It was previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819811)

</comment><comment><USER6> Mathematics has a massive problem with communication. There are communities among mathematicians which exclude each other and these communities are invisible to the outsider, so the field appears to be full of contradictions. For example, ZFC is fine for calculus (most of engineering), but completely inadequate for computer science. For CS you have to allow self-reference and that is expressly verboten in ZFC. By extension, CS only needs the natural numbers, forgoing Hilbert space for Banach space + process.

Hilbert said "Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!", and just the day prior Gödel demonstrated the futility of axiomatic set theory. Yet, still today, ZFC set theory is assumed unless it is stated otherwise.

There are Luddites among mathematcians, and Turing died for their sins.

<comment><USER7> I think there are definitely interesting things to talk about in foundations, and also that many are now well motivated by computer science. It's not like these are either unknown or special, though. For most "practical", pure math arguing about foundations can't move your field forward as it is not holding your field back.

Further, differences in communication rarely stem from foundational issues as much as merely the social construct that practitioners in separate fields have less to say to one another than those in the same field. This leads to semantic drift and development of independent metaphor technologies. Translation necessarily becomes more expensive and so higher ROI is required in order to motivate it.

<comment><USER6> I think I can express my opinion simply now. Thank you. -

"Practical" pure math appears to be based on formalism rather than intuitionism. Because foundations and therefore intuition does not hold formalism back, these practitioners drift further away from being able to communicate their metaphors to whose who rely on intuition; such as biologists.

\- And this is my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Are you uniting "intuitionism" and common "intuition"? I'm not personally sure I disagree here at all, but I'm certain many would!

<comment><USER6> Strictly no... Then We would have to debate what common intuition is and that is untenable.

What I am trying to say is that math is a discipline of philosophy, that the integers are divine, and that the straightedge and compass ought to be enough for anybody. ;) I often rely on my intuition for abstract thought, and repeatedly find that others have reached the same conclusions that I do. Therefore (my own) intuition is repeatable, and therefore intuition is scientific.

Juxtapose formalism, which seems to say that math is solely the practice of inventing rules and following them to the end. - I understand why this idea has its own beauty, haughty as it might seem, but at the same time it is a very strange and in my opinion frightening kind of beauty because it intends to remain unknowable.

Turing, who I have apparently proclaimed a saint, seems to observe that both of these paradigms are needed for some kind of universal, and altogether anthropomorphic, program. I would be hard pressed to dismiss any idea which appears beautiful...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > Their editor wrote me that 'higher degree polynomials', 'infinitesimal > vectors' and 'complex space' (even complex numbers) were things at least > half their readership had never come across.

It appears to me that in software engineering the situation is a lot better. Anecdotes from my own recent experiences:

\- polynomials (encountered when reading about CRC codes and elliptic curve cryptography),

\- infinitesimals and vectors (encountered when recalling Newton's third law when working on a small Android game using libGDX and box2d),

\- complex numbers (encountered when learning Go and reading about AC circuits).

I haven't encountered complex space, but my guess is that it's similar to the familiar real vector space but permits complex numbers as vector components and coefficients in linear combinations.

<comment><USER4> Cool thing about software, at least when talking about coding up stuff for fun and not programming career, is that it tends to expose you to a great amount of different fields of knowledge.

<comment><USER8> Bingo. I think the biggest problem CS students have is being under the impression they're studying a career directly instead of learning the tools they need to tackle unknown problems directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The version submitted in the comments is better than Mumford's IMO.</comment>


Ask HN: what's your favourite startup/agency Christmas greeting? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all
An agency I work with has just launched its 2011 online 'Christmas card' for clients and friends. It's a lot of fun (I'll post a link to it in the comments), but got me thinking: how do startups (and other agencies) have a bit of fun with their holiday greetings? Good examples welcome!
Steve <comment><USER2> An agency my partner worked for did "Jumpers for Shelter" last year: employees hand-knitted or hand-accessorized a jumper, which was then auctioned along with some bling donated by clients (kitchen knives, computer games, jewellery). All money from the eBay auction went to Shelter.

[http://en-gb.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.175361102491973.4...](http://en- gb.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.175361102491973.43425.167375409957209&type=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mint Digital (based in London) did a great one a few years ago.

I got sent a moleskine which had the words "Amicus Menthae" embossed in it.

If you google the phrase, you get this website: <http://amicusmenthae.com/>

An image of the moleskine is also there if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's one we did this year: <http://monsters.partizan.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the 2011 one from all of us at Torchbox: <http://sing.torchbox.com>

(Yes, this is a pretty gratuitous plug, I know, but it's fun. See the FAQs link for how we built it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's what we did the year before: <http://vimeo.com/17915496>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This one's awesome: teehan+lax recreated their logo by painting the partners blue

<http://www.teehanlax.com/holiday2011/>

<comment><USER2> You really need to do a "Making of" video for that sort of thing. It's nice having both the e-presence and the physical Christmas card to send (or to have already sent out) to clients.</comment></comment>


The Backlash Against Marie Kondo of Netflix's 'Tidying Up' - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-racist-backlash-against-marie-kondo-of-netflixs-tidying-up-10 <comment><USER2> This is a good article, highlighting what's going on.

I like the show, I've no idea why people are so obsessed with throwing crap at her.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me neither, the thing that seems to be unique with Marie Kondo, is that she encourages people to bring a spiritual dimension to their relationship with objects.

You may not agree with that perspective, but to me it's a nice change from the other de-cluttering consultants.

<comment><USER2> I do like that, actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems less about racism than women crapping on her. (I think her show is interesting and pleasant.)

<comment><USER4> The articles point is that most of the crapping has a strong racist flavor. Which sounds plausible, if not yet statistically demonstrated.

Certainly there are plenty of closet racists and 1/2 racists being drawn out by Ms Kondo.

<comment><USER3> My opinion is that people reach for whatever stick is handy when they want to be cruel to someone. Often it's gender, race, appearance, etc. But that's not racism--it's being an asshole.

Racism is "I won't watch your show because you're Japanese."</comment></comment></comment>


John Nack of Adobe on Flash: Sympathy for the Devil - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/sympathy_for_the_devil.html

<comment><USER2> Last time I checked you couldn't use Flash-based H.264 for "commercial purposes" so their domination of web video is based on looking the other way as people break their licence.

 _Q: What parts of the H.264 license are included when I buy Adobe Products?

A: The end user license to the Adobe Flash Player allows users to playback H.264 content for your own non-commercial use. Commercial use of the Flash Player to decode H.264 video may require a separate license._

quoted from here:

[http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:H...](http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:H.264#Q:_When_does_MPEG_LA_require_payment_of_a_use_fee_or_royalty.2C_and_do_I_need_my_own_license_for_H.264_.3F)

Someone should lock these pirates up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not just about video on the web, it's about horribly inaccessible web sites which use Flash for no apparent reason. At least it's easy to block, which removes the worst of distracting online adverts.

So it's useful they made video work, but they haven't made rich media web sites work very well. Things like accessibility and text extraction for search engines have been recent afterthoughts.

But the fact that people put significant effort into blocking your product isn't a good sign, is it? <http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/>

</comment><comment><USER3> "But let's also be honest and say that Flash is the reason we all have fast, reliable, ubiquitous online video today. It's the reason that YouTube took off & video consumption exploded four years ago. It's the reason we have Hulu, Vimeo, and all the rest. [...] Macromedia was the only company that delivered _truly ubiquitous_ (99% penetration) video playback."

"truly ubiquitous": [http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers...](http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html)

I don't know where to find other (read: relevant) statistics on this topic, so if anyone else does, that'd be great to have here.

Because you can't damn well claim Flash's ubiquity to be _the reason_ for all these several-years-old occurrences and then cite penetration statistics from _2009_ as your evidence. In fact, in the absence of telling data, I'm inclined to believe YouTube taking off is more _the reason_ for Flash's ubiquity than the other way around. But that's just a hunch-- a hunch perhaps supported by this later snippet: "[M]ore than three quarters of online video now streams in Flash formats (up from 25% three years ago)."

Additionally, it's simply illogical to claim that "[w]ithout [Flash], we'd all still be bumbling along" when the only evidence provided for said claim is ubiquity, regardless of whether Flash was anywhere near as ubiquitous as Nack leads his readers to believe.

Hypothetical scenario: Flash never existed. Now what? No other video standard would've achieved ubiquity in its place? Why is _that_ conclusion so certainly the case? We're not talking about static technologies with substantive and unalterable differences between them. We're talking about dynamic technologies capable of changing and improving any measure of quality relatively quickly, if need be. What am I to believe next? That if the English had never survived the Middle Ages (let's say the would-be King Arthur had a sore arm one fateful day) then the world today, with absolute certainty, _would not_ have a global language/ _lingua franca_ at all? French, Spanish, Chinese, et al. could never have done it in time for me to sit on my computer in the 21st century? That we'd all "still be bumbling along"? C'mon, Nack.

<comment><USER4> If you want older stats, here they are: [http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.macromedia.com/software/pla...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html)</comment></comment>


How to not get ripped off by web developers/web development companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-ripped-off-web-developersweb-development-michael-hamilton?published=t <comment><USER2> Hire a designer before dev then create the user journey in screenshots as part of the requirements detailing out the contract and export all the assets. Also agree on fees for out of scope elements that always pop up.</comment>


Definitions, Definitions, Do We Need Them? - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/definitions-definitions-do-we-need-them/

<comment><USER2> Definitions are useful for experts in a field. It is much faster to just refer to a concept by its name rather than explaining it every time.

Unfortunately, definitions are a terrible thing for students. Even more unfortunately, most books are written in the following style:

1\. Here's a paragraph-long definition that makes no sense to you at this point.

2\. Here's a proof of this thing you don't yet understand.

3\. Oh, you want to practice? Here's an example problem and a solution. When you see a problem like this one, plug numbers into this formula in the bold box.

4\. A bunch more problems to try plugging numbers into yourself.

5\. The discussion on what this thing is actually useful for is outside the scope of this book. Read about that somewhere else.

The best teachers actually explain how the thing they are teaching works. They start with a limited concept the student can understand, and then refine it to make it more formal. Good textbooks do this too. The bad ones start with the definition in a box.

The problem is that by the time a professor writes a textbook, this stuff is second nature to them. The prof is an expert. So he/she starts with the definition, since that is how the professor commonly communicates this concept. The book then ends up looking like the author is trying to make him/herself look smart at the expense of the reader. Writing an accessible book is a rare talent.

Wow this turned into a long rant :)</comment>


Show HN: Newsletter covering big topics – daily on average - <AUTHOR> Here : https://outsideplatoscave.substack.com/<p>Regularly updated, give me strength with a subscribe if you like it ! No spam guaranteed. <comment><AUTHOR> direct link added in comment</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs on web development? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you're in the EU/US then probably Lambda School, but since you already know Python may as well try a practical data science course [http://www.datasciencecourse.org/lectures/](http://www.datasciencecourse.org/lectures/) most of that course is wrangling with APIs and scraping/parsing html to clean and manipulate data, at least it will get you a way to get paid immediately after by going on those terrible freelancer sites (Upwork) and making $100 here and there scraping Amazon and cramming the results into shopify stores or excel spreadsheets. You learn web development from the opposite direction as a human browser. Linear Algebra isn't necessary, the course is self-contained but if you want there's a great course for that done in Python too [http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs053/current/lectures.htm](http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs053/current/lectures.htm) and while this looks like a lot to do, if you have 45mins a day to eat breakfast in front of a screen watching a lecture and another 45mins later to try the homework you'll find you finish these courses in a matter of weeks and can move on to your own experimental hackery building things which is when you really begin to learn, as you figure out things for yourself.

Once you have experience manipulating APIs as a user you can try building your own [http://www.cs.bc.edu/~muller/teaching/cs102/s06/lib/pdf/api-...](http://www.cs.bc.edu/~muller/teaching/cs102/s06/lib/pdf/api- design) and now you are a jr "backend developer" who can move on to a systems programming course to further understand what you're doing [https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...](https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%22b96d90ae-9871-4fae-91e2-b1627b43e25e%22&maxResults=50)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://freecodecamp.com](http://freecodecamp.com)

I find a lot of the MOOCs go too slow or cover things that aren't so relevant. FCC has a good balance of both. It's not in the typical MOOC structure, but it does have videos, forums, discussions, but much of it is code and text.</comment>


The App Destroying Iran's Currency – Foreign Policy - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/22/the-app-destroying-irans-currency/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like an opinion piece without much justification and evidence. Occam's razor suggests that the uncertainty and longstanding high rate of inflation should explain currency devaluation. For years, the 1- to 5-year CD rate had been in the 20%-30% range. Compound that and add uncertainty related to the price of oil and international sanctions. Telegram sounds like red herring. If it has any effect, it's at the margin. It's simply a popular messaging app in that geo. Any other conclusion would likely be reading too much into this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since the currency went to 190k and then to 125k now; I think short-traders should have been badly hurt.

</comment><comment><USER4> How's the cryptocurrency scene in Iran?</comment>


3D-based video recognition acceleration by leveraging temporal locality - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3322260 <comment><AUTHOR> As of July 3rd: · Downloads (cumulative): 3,700 · Downloads (12 Months): 3,700 · Downloads (6 Weeks): 3,700</comment>


Show HN: A set of standard document templates - <AUTHOR> A collection of common templates and documents I have been using over the years. I am tired of trying to google them every time I need them, so I just gathered them all here.
I would love to hear yours and add them to the list.
The list:
- Pitch
- Vision
- Strategy
- Product Requirements
- Technical Design
- Product Opportunity Assessment
- Product Vision
- Run Book
https://github.com/kbariotis/templates <comment><USER2> You know, this is a great idea. I've been writing slide decks since the late 80's and having a template to think about the problem first is really useful. Can't believe this never occurred to me. Thanks! I just pulled down your tech_design template and I'm going to use it this week.

[Abe Simpson Story: in the 80s/90s "Slide Decks" were called "Foils" because they were printed (by the print center) on transparencies and shown on overhead projectors.]

<comment><USER3> > were called "Foils" because they were printed (by the print center) on > transparencies and shown on overhead projectors.

How does that explain them being called 'foils'? I think you missed some part of the explanation?

<comment> frant-hartm Because the slides are made from foil? Or at least they look like the are?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it's a language thing, to me "foil" without a qualifier means exclusively aluminium foil. I'd never have called ohp acetate "foil".

<comment><USER5> I know them as "transparencies", but according to this "foils" was also common: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_\(projection\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Expected Word documents. Relieved when I saw it's Markdown.

HN will be HN. Thank you for that!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is very cool! Would love to see a set of template legal documents on there too someday, something like Basecamp's [https://github.com/basecamp/policies](https://github.com/basecamp/policies)

</comment><comment><USER8> i actually wrote that down as side project idea yesterday! glad to see someone doing it.

i have a different set of documents in mind though. my list is more developer oriented. here's the kind i wanted:

\- project readme (from simple to very involved)

\- pull requests

\- open source licenses (i think GitHub does this right?)

\- code of conduct

\- code testing template

\- benchmarks

i also bookmarked these links:

[https://embeddedartistry.com/templates](https://embeddedartistry.com/templates)

[https://www.sans.org/security- resources/policies](https://www.sans.org/security-resources/policies) (this one is an old one i had not sure how i even stumble upon it...)

<comment><USER9> For whatever reason, my brain immediately pictured the Code of Conduct written in BASIC:

        10 RESPECT OTHERS
        20 BE CIVIL
        20 RESPECT COMPANY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
        30 GOTO 10

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> pitch deck : [https://blog.ycombinator.com/intro-to-the-yc-seed- deck/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/intro-to-the-yc-seed-deck/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice one, could probably convert it to a Markdown format as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I particularly like the links to the basis of each template in the various sections.

</comment><comment><USER12> >I am tired of trying to google them every time I need them

This is cool, but how many times in ones life does one need these?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah definitely not every week, but it's nice to have a single reference to go to the moment that you need them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi Kostas, Great idea to pull this together. A bunch of us tech writers have had a similar idea, and have banded together to create the key standard templates for tech projects - focusing initially on the core open-source documents required. Still early days for us, but we have put an alpha 0.1 release out. Are you, or anyone else reading, interested in getting involved.

[https://thegooddocsproject.dev/](https://thegooddocsproject.dev/)

If interested, you can reach me at cameron D O T shorter AT gm ail . com

</comment><comment><USER14> This could grow into an awesome-document-templates list..

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed and I would love to see what people have been using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for putting this together. I'm wondering if you were to use these, what the order of operations for a product would be? Maybe Product Opportunity Assessment > Product Vision > Product Requirements?

</comment><comment><USER10> roadmaps : [https://usefyi.com/templates/roadmap- templates/](https://usefyi.com/templates/roadmap-templates/)

<comment><USER16> Can anyone comment on Coda? First time I've seen it - looks pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I created this template using steve blank's book

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f8pRkNiRiG7FWYJRaylVSyoRfAX...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f8pRkNiRiG7FWYJRaylVSyoRfAXgUVEr/view?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER18> Much of it would work as a nested list. (org-mode user here :))

</comment><comment><USER19> \- Post-mortem

\- Incident report

\- Scheduled down time

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://github.com/kbariotis/templates](https://github.com/kbariotis/templates)

<comment><USER20> How do you know me so well</comment></comment>


MIT Shock Absorbers Harness Speed Bump Energy For Better Fuel Economy, Developed By Undergrads - <AUTHOR> http://i.gizmodo.com/5151447/mit-shock-absorbers-harness-speed-bump-energy-for-better-fuel-economy

<comment><USER2> Already posted:

Here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=476391>

Here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=476024></comment>


Ask HN: Why should I switch from php to django or rails? - <AUTHOR>

Hey. I am a php programmer. I mostly work on a freelance/consultant basis. I use framework (Symfony or codeigniter) and ORM (doctrine). These tools are quite powerful, and what I have seen after a very brief look at rails, they provide pretty much every functionality (correct me if I am wrong).<p>Considering how much more easier it is to deploy php+mysql+apache applications, give me some good reasons why I should learn rails or django.<p>(One very obvious reason would be to take up jobs where the client wants me to work on rails or django. Let's ignore this point for now. Just consider that I get new projects and I am free to choose my platform/language) <comment><USER2> If you really _love_ your tools right now, don't switch.

I would suggest learning something else, though (I chose Grails a few years ago), because at the very least it'll give you a new appreciation for your toolset. You'll understand the strengths more, you may identify some weaknesses (either inherent in your tools or how you use them) and start to think about how to use your own chosen tools better.

I split my time between PHP and Grails now, for the most part (some occasional other work) and knowing both I have a better idea of how/when to use specific approaches.

You may end up hating your PHP toolset after a while using something else, because you'll start noticing how verbose PHP makes some tasks (using a framework like symfony can sometimes reduce that). Or you may recoil at how ugly some of the Ruby or Python stuff feels to you. You won't know until you try, but I think everyone should take _some_ time to learn a moderately different platform at some point, if only to help to understand your own platform better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I must confess that even though I have tried other php frameworks, I have never tried any other language for web development. (I used ASP like 5 years ago, but I guess that doesn't count now) I will give your advice a shot. Maybe not just learn the basics about rails and django(already done that).. I'd probably need to develop one or two projects to really learn the benefits and pitfalls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It all depends on what you want to build: if you see a future for yourself where you do more than building traditional CRUD web applications, then explore a new application field & a language that fits that field (e.g. AI/Lisp, NLP/Python). I'm glad I did exactly that & discovered Python/NLTK for NLP.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really don't think there are any very convincing reasons, if you are competent already with php+frameworks.

Perhaps Heroku for easy deployment? I haven't used it myself but I gather it makes life easy.

The question to ask yourself is whether you find yourself doing things you feel you shouldn't have to do, whether that's repeating yourself or creating functionality that should already be built in or available as an addon. If you are happy with what you have, it doesn't matter what everybody else is doing.

It only really matters if there is something discontinuously advantageous in switching, for scaling reasons perhaps. But for now, I'd say your own existing expertise in php would more than outweigh any advantages of switching.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've switched from PHP to Django for personal projects. Here's some random thoughts:

\- Deploying Django isn't hard at all. No more difficult than LAMP apps.

\- Python is a better language than PHP (IMHO)

\- Tons of python libraries to work with. Wanna resize thumbnails? It's easier to work with PIL than cobbling together imagemagick commands.

I've never worked with those PHP frameworks, so I can't comment specifically on them. They're probably fine to work with, but I'll always stick with Django over learning a PHP framework. The main difference is getting to use a language like Python or Ruby instead of PHP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah.. I hear that the languages themselves offer a lot of benefits rather than the frameworks. I have just read some quickstart guides on rails and django, so I guess I should spend more time trying to learn the language first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Django is a pure pleasure. You get all the power of python. The documentation is great and the google user group is even better. Django gives you a bunch of stuff for free ORM, admin interface, and authentication. Of course freedom comes with a cost but their built in tools cover 90% of the common use cases. Syntax in my opinion is much better in python.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only question you need to ask yourself is whether usage of these other languages is going to filter down into tangible benefits for the customer.

If the answer is no, then arguing one over the other is just pointless fan service. Try not to let it get in the way of you actually producing and iterating.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are good at your current tools and aren't frustrated with them in any major way, there is no need to think about anything else other than for "expanding your horizons" type of thing. LAMP with PHP is just as good as anything else. Remember there is no silver bullet.

</comment><comment><USER9> > they provide pretty much every functionality (correct me if I am wrong)

For me, it's not about the functionality. It's about the culture, and the productivity. Also, I love Ruby.

> Considering how much more easier it is to deploy php+mysql+apache > applications

This is not really true anymore. Rails is pretty easy to deploy these days, especially with things like Phusion Passenger.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best acronyms that programmers should know? - <AUTHOR> I just discovered YAGNI — "You aren't gonna need it" — and facepalmed at all the time I would've saved if I'd really internalized that lesson sooner. Apparently, it's a frequent enough problem that it's now an acronym.<p>What else should I be liberally referring to as I try to improve my practices? <comment><USER2> API [0] - application programming interface

\- not often explained when learning programming, but essential

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api- javascript/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER3> KISS: Keep it simple stupid

</comment><comment><USER4> Looking for acronyms is a waste of time, let alone save you time. Just make enough mistakes fast enough to learn from them. And Let The Acronyms Be Alone. ALTABA.

</comment><comment><USER5> PEMDAS Mathematical order of operations. Parenthesis, exponent, multiply, divide, add, subtract. I only learnt this a year ago and it's almost embarrassing how much my maths or ability to understand math has improved from this(I'm 28 and never gotten taught this in schools general maths so I used to find math really difficult).

<comment><USER6> To complete the picture, you might've been taught a completely different mnemonic in other countries. The one I was taught was BODMAS ( "B"rackets, "O"f or "O"rder, "D"ivision, "M"ultiplication, "A"ddition and "S"ubtraction) and some African countries teach this as BIDMAS [0]. Caused a lot of confusion when I came to the US and drew a blank when someone mentioned PEMDAS in an example.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Mnemonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Mnemonics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Definitely SOLID [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLID_(object- oriented_design)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLID_\(object- oriented_design\))

It contains: \- SRP \- OCP \- LSP \- ISP \- DIP

</comment><comment><USER8> KISS - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)

</comment><comment><USER9> PEBKAC

<comment><USER10> as a ops person.. this is my favorite

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> CRUD - create read update delete ACID - atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability

</comment><comment><USER12> RTFM

</comment><comment><USER13> LGTM, SGTM. Looks, Sounds good to me. WIP. Work in progress.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pebcak is the only one you need

</comment><comment><USER15> CAP

Consistency Availability Performance. At scale, pick any two.

<comment><USER16> Partition tolerance?

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it just means that you can distribute the system across a cluster. Since we only talk about the CAP theorem in the context of distributed systems, you have to assume "P" has already been chosen. So the theorem is really about a trade-off between "C" and "A".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FUBAR, WTF, SOL, SSDD, STFU, FML

</comment><comment><USER19> WET - Write Everything Twice

</comment><comment><USER20> NDA 83(b) IPO AMT

</comment><comment><USER21> REPL, SOLID, DRY, CQRS

</comment><comment><USER22> The various stack acronyms such as LAMP and MEAN.

</comment><comment><USER23> TLA

</comment><comment><USER24> DRY</comment>


Clever: A Game in plain HTML (no JavaScript, no Flash, no PHP) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beef.de/2008/01/16/html-game/

<comment><USER2> When a child, I used to do that for writing interactive stories with .bat files. Later I found a way to create small action games in .bat files, believe me! "choice" was the key command there.</comment>


Don't Sell Out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oil Companies - <AUTHOR> https://act.audubon.org/onlineactions/jhAgYIERqUyEWxgC-iPZFA2 <comment><USER2> Everything is connected. The more we lose bird and insect species, the harder it will be on the flowers,grasses, and trees. The harder it is on those, the harder it is on use due to erosion and has CO2 scrubbing by the plants. We lost the last White Rhino last year, 3 bird species, and others. The extinction rate each of the last five years has been 1000 to 10000 times the normal rate.

[https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-01-02-exti...](https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-01-02-extinct- animal-species-2018)

<comment><USER3> As a society, we've chosen to prioritize financial interests above all else; thereby, robbing future generations of the richness and majesty that makes the world a beautiful place.

When propagandists successfully politicized environmental protection, they set us on a path that not only ensured the mass extinction of thousands of species of plants and animals, but also jeopardized the survival of our own species.

No one has a full picture of what the impacts of the impending extinctions and climate events will be, but I believe characterizing them as an existential crisis for the human race is accurate.

Money doesn't do much good when the food and water are poisoned, the air is toxic to breathe, and vast portions of the continents are under water. Unfortunately, we're not well adapted to dealing with slow moving threats such as these, so addressing the situation while there's still time seems dubious at best.

<comment><USER4> > As a society, we've chosen to prioritize financial interests above all else;

As a government*

While the government is supposed to be for the people, by the people, they often act against the desires and interests of the population.

<comment><USER5> Dunno where you are, but in the States somewhere between forty-five and fifty- five percent of the voting public will vote for just about anything if it's good "for the economy".

(That is the charitable reading of their voting record, anyway.)

<comment><USER6> Nah, they'll vote for anything their party tells them to. Most people don't have any sort of guiding principles. Their decisions are mainly based on tribalism, identity, and partisanship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please don't buy the hype. I'm going to guess that almost everyone would agree with preservation of environment and wildlife. But the drilling in northern Alaska is not what one may think. Drilling sites have small surface foot prints and reach out via horizontal drilling. Additionally, oil exploration on the north slope of Alaska has been going on since the 1960's with a remarkably good health, safety, and environmental responsibility record. Look at their record and what they've been doing. It may be a rare case, but Alaska's north slope environment has not been harmed by exploratory drilling sites.

<comment><USER8> The actual drilling is not the real issue. The drills are indeed a negligible footprint. But every drilling site has a road. Every road has bridges. Then, should oil be pumped, pipelines and other support infrastructure. Surrounding all of this is then the local risk of spills, and the non-local implications of burning yet more oil. So to stop all that nasty stuff later, we need to stop the preliminary drilling today.

Canada is struggling with abandoned oil infrastructure, tar sand developments that companies do not want to clean up. (There was a recent supreme court case about this.) For all the pre-planning and taxation, everyone knows that some day in the future it will be the government saddled with cleanup costs.

<comment><USER9> I don't know why this is being downvoted. Agree or disagree, it's a reasonable contribution to the conversation. To me, downvotes are for bad-faith arguments, axe-grinding, comments that raise issues answered in TFA, and other things that worsen the quality of conversation.

<comment><USER8> People downvote things that make them angry. The closer one gets to an uncomfortable truth, the greater the anger.

I honestly think that the majority of downvotes on HN are from people silenced by the posting limit. Lacking the ability to respond in text, their only agency is to downvote. The calm and considerate people who read more and speak less don't hit that limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's plenty of oil in the world. Why do we feel the need to go after every last drop in the United States?

It'll still be there in 100 years, if we need it.

<comment><USER11> Why are we still doing for oil anyways?! We are about to kill everyone on the planet with our fossil fuel addiction.

<comment><USER12> Because we don't care. We want to drive our giant SUVs 2-3 hours a day so we can live in a McMansion in the exurbs, and we don't give a shit about what this is going to do to future generations.

Furthermore, roughly half of Americans don't believe this is even a problem, and don't care about what any scientists tell them, because their religious leaders and favorite politicians tell them otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Should we all have to be in agreement to finally take meaningful action? If we were in a space station with thin walls and some folks want to set up a shooting range for their own enjoyment we'd stop them by all means. We wouldn't care if those people believe in vacuum outside the space station or not. Might seem far fetched, but we are very much in the same situation.

<comment><USER12> >If we were in a space station with thin walls and some folks want to set up a shooting range for their own enjoyment we'd stop them by all means.

No, we wouldn't, nor should we. The reason is democracy: if the people in that space station have a democratic government, and more than half of them vote for leaders who promise them they can keep their shooting range, no matter how dangerous, well then everyone else just has to live with it.

Hopefully, it's obvious here that democracy only really works when the citizens are smart enough to use it well. The problem is that, in many cases, they just aren't, which is what we're seeing now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I went to Alaska last January. It's like no place else I've ever been. The folks there both _really_ care about the environment and _really_ care about the oil industry. It is a question of much debate _there_. It's an interesting case study.

The state had a huge economic boom about 30 years ago as a result of the Alyeska pipeline. Lots of people (in relative terms, Alaska is not and will never be densely populated) moved there to take advantage. Basically everyone else is there because it has been their home for generations, or because they moved there _for_ the nature aspect.

Economic booms don't last forever. Now you have people who moved there for money (which is gone) consistently at odds with people who are there for other reasons. The former want to bring back the boom times, and will pretty much vote for anyone who says they can do that. The latter just want to move on with their lives and protect what has not already been damaged.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'll just leave this here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion)

<comment><USER15> I'll just leave this here as well: [https://www.gorillatough.com/product/gorilla-super- glue/](https://www.gorillatough.com/product/gorilla-super-glue/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always found it amusing that the Scandinavian countries lauded for being socialist utopias with the highest quality of life do so by drilling like Arabian princes, yet you only hear complaining about exploitation in the red state of alaska which only produces 5% of the nation's crude and has a generally so-so quality of life.

</comment><comment><USER17> I work for oil & gas in the Canadian oil sands. If you want to us to stop drilling and mining, you should stop demanding that we do it. It's no different than ivory from Africa or drugs from South America. In Canada we pay $1.20 per litre of gasoline ($4.50 per gallon) - love to see the US try that.

<comment><USER15> Yes, the demand for oil is a huge problem, and we should all do our best to stop driving and flying all the time.

That said, I'd encourage you, if it's something that's economically possible for you, to consider finding work elsewhere. Sticking to your analogy, the poacher who shoots the elephants is not entirely innocent either.

I used to work for a sketchy company, so I also recognise that this is not an easy decision to make. I used to think _If I don 't do it, somebody else will_.

<comment><USER17> No, I'm not going to be demonized for producing something the entire world needs. How many on HN and Silicon Valley can say the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> ANWR, A place few people have ever set foot, let alone seen, including environmentalist from a distance. Meanwhile the state has an unemployment rate of about 7%, and a lot of people depend on the revenue from the sale of oil to live. I say drill. Alaska isn't the place you're going to see Amazon build a warehouse, at least let them have something.

<comment><USER11> If Alaska isn't a good place to live for humans but great for other inhabitants, the humans should move. If my choice is between a polar bear or a town in Alaska, I'll pick the polar bear anytime and move the town. We don't need to turn every corner of the planet into a place serving our immediate human needs. In fact we've already done that to too many places and are ruining the planet for everyone while doing so.

On top of that we shouldn't be drilling for oil anywhere. We likely have already turned the planet into a uninhabitable wasteland by burning too many fossil fuels. We need to have a hard cut on our fossil fuel dependence and not sorry it further.

<comment><USER19> > If Alaska isn't a good place to live for humans but great for other > inhabitants, the humans should move.

The indigenous populations in the Arctic are often very poor. Who is going to pay for them to move to Ft. Lauderdale, or even as far as Juneau? House them, find them jobs, etc?

"Just move" is a non-solution also offered up for pretty much every factory closing in the rust belt, coal miners in WV, etc. It vastly overestimates the mobility of many families, especially those near or in poverty.

That said, Prudhoe Bay has double the national unemployment rate, so I don't buy the argument that drilling is a magical answer to unemployment. (And we should stop burning stuff for energy)

<comment><USER20> The reality is that the oil companies usually hire non-natives. They'll make big promises to the communities though before a project so that no one makes waves. Haven't yet heard of a case where they delivered the jobs to the native communities that were promised.</comment></comment></comment></comment>