Bloomberg debate video would violate Twitters deepfake policy but not Facebooks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21146227/facebook-twitter-bloomberg-debate-video-manipulated-deepfake <comment><USER2> So what? It's not like the video is getting taken down, just marked.

I'd honestly prefer if more satire was labeled as such....</comment>


Instant Apps for the Apple Watch with the Wolfram Language - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/04/instant-apps-for-the-apple-watch-with-the-wolfram-language/ <comment><USER2> It's such a shame the licensing of Wolfram Mathematica is so strict and pricing is high. I get it, it's the fruit of a lot of hard work but sadly it won't get the traction it deserves.

<comment><USER3> The Wolfram Cloud sandbox

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

and raspberry-pi

[http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi](http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi)

editions are free. I understand - low power - but still one can at least try it out.

<comment><USER2> With a non-commercial license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had no idea the Wolfram Cloud had grown so useful. If you're here reading comments to see if the article is worth it: It shows how small snippets of code in the Wolfram Language get packaged as an "app" via a companion app on iPhone (which seems like a runtime essentially). That iPhone app also has an Apple Watch component to surface the packaged Wolfram Code app on the watch. Tons of quick examples of pretty clever things.

</comment><comment><USER5> I bought the Home edition of Mathematica, and have always enjoyed using it. You can program in many paradigms, functional, rules-based, imperative, etc... The hooks to the data and the notebook interface, far before iPython, iJulia, Beaker and others came along, so it has a head start with integration, and as another wrote below, a great standard library.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who uses the wolfram language? It seems pretty expressive and powerful... but I don't really see a strong case for adoption.

<comment><USER7> I've only ever seen or heard of it being used by Stephen Wolfram. It must be fun to have a huge engineering team to help support what is essentially a pet project.

Maybe they will someday release something with general availability and competitive pricing, but for now it seems to be behind a walled garden. But I wouldn't worry. If Wolfram Language truly exposes any novel concepts, then it is only a matter of time until the open source community implements those features for everyone else to use.

It's a shame, but I'm skeptical Wolfram will ever see the inherent value of getting real software into the world. From what I've seen, he would much rather build proprietary toys that only he can use, rather than building open- source tools that can be ubiquitous.

If Wolfram has cool toys and isn't willing to share, then so be it. The open source community can build our own cool toys.

<comment><USER8> The language part of the Wolfram Language is still really kludgy to use and quite slow. Even doing simple things like writing a function or an if statement is painful. What it does have going for it is the biggest, baddest standard library available.

imo, the language would be much more compelling if the syntax was redesigned from the ground up and made easier to debug (the error messages in Mathematica are next to useless)

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry but your comment will be grossly misleading to people unfamiliar with the language. There's absolutely nothing painful about If and Function. However, I must note that in a rule-based language both are used far more sparingly than they would be in an imperative, or even functional language. I found myself moving from If to Replace, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does this get around the App Store Review Guidelines?

        2.7: Apps that download code in any way or form will be rejected
        2.8: Apps that install or launch other executable code will be rejected

<comment><USER11> This is just a guess, but it looks like it could be running in a WebView:

> although the apps were designed for the Apple Watch, you can actually also > use them on the web, or on a phone

<comment><USER12> I would love to see some of these on the pebble time or android wear as well

<comment><USER3> It is on pebble

[http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/406359](http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/406359)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PyGo Wave Server is here - play with the Waves now - <AUTHOR> http://wavety.com/pygo-wave-server/

<comment><USER2> Guess that puts the lie to Ray Ozzie's criticism that it's too complex for anyone to do an implementation of.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to me that the entire key to having this whole thing work out is if we have as many of these as possible. I think it's great that these guys were willing to put in the effort before Google even brought their product to market. We're looking at a parallel dual network effect here: the product/client (ie, barring any unforeseen, giant occurrences, Google's client) will only take off if it manages to establish a large userbase for an unproven product. BUT: Wave, as a protocol, as a server type—as a web technology rather than a Google tool—will only take off if it manages to establish a large codebase of clients and servers for an unproven protocol. As far as I can tell the one thing that will have the biggest effect in a) ensuring Wave's success and b) actually IMPROVING Wave and shaping it according to the needs of the web at large is if as many people as possible do what PyGo has just done first.

</comment><comment><USER4> EXTREMELY minimal, but I really like the openness and availability. At the very least, it's a good way to test your own gadgets. I'll certainly be playing with this more during the next few weeks.

<comment><USER5> Is he actually handling the multi-user communication, i.e. sending the gadget updates to the server and between clients properly the same way that Google does it? If so, then he did the hardest and most important part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is all I get after registering:

Account activation

Sorry, your account could not be activated. I don't care why this happened.

<comment><USER7> u: m00m00 p: m00m00

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I skimmed the original story when it came out but this wave thing just hasn't grabbed me. Can someone give an elevator pitch for what's exciting about it, please?

 _edit_ uh, this <http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-wave.html> makes it sound like a "realtime wiki." Isn't that very similar to Y-com's <http://etherpad.com/>, that pg now uses to write his essays, and has (or had) patents on part of the tech?

<comment><USER9> This feels like a troll, but I'll respect anyone with a Karma of 996 and try my best to answer the question. First, it's important to watch the Google Video in which the product is introduced. Wave creates a new family of application categories. Etherpad is just one _instance_ of one _particular_ application category.

My elevator pitch (probably inaccurate, but it's mine) - "Real Time multi-way fedreated communication that creates secure rich-format conversation." It's the Real-Time element + the Multi-Way + the fact that people can drop in on conversations later on that make it exciting. What got people excited was the open-source nature plus (if I'm not mistaken in my memory) the decentralized aspect - multiple organizations could run their own wave server, so these conversations could be kept entirely internal, or interoperate with external Wave servers. It has elements of IRC, Instant Messaging, E-Mail, Lotus Notes, and WIKIs all rolled into one.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I can see it's a faster, more interactive and dynamic version of a wiki (plus other stuff) - and speed-increases tend to be popular. It's a logical tech progression, but I'm not sure it solves a problem.

You mention Lotus Notes: I seem to recall reading Lotus Notes was a cool idea ("groupware") that didn't take off despite passionate proponents, and that it lead to Lotus being vulnerable to being bought by IBM and... ceasing to exist. Maybe today's tech foundation (HTML, web, etc) and now-online target market will cause a different outcome.

I hesitate a little when software is announced before it is released (e.g. google was just released); and when something is presented as a universal solution (but neither of these prove anything).

I think it must solve a problem that I personally don't have, so that explains my (personal) lack of excitement (note: many things have had massive success that I haven't been excited about, so this isn't a criticism of the tech). I tried to watch the Video of it, but it just didn't grab me enough to keep watching (again, just my personal reaction). Perhaps my perspective is really "we had non-interactive email... and we liked it!" and "get off my lawn".

PS: Re "troll". I thought I was asking a straightforward question, though skeptical. Observation: if a non-enthusiast's innocent request about a tech feels like a troll to that tech's proponents, it forms a barrier for adoption beyond the proponents. Not judging, just noting.

Re karma: I periodically start a new account on HN, because I believe karma distorts perceptions. Luckily I didn't ask this question at the start of a new account, or (it seems) I would have been dismissed as a troll.

<comment><USER10> The video answers your questions, though, so I'd highly recommend you stick through it if this is a topic you're at all interested in enough to inquire about. It's harder to explain in a convincing way and if the video doesn't excite you then our descriptions absolutely won't.

There's only so much of "new way of collaboration and communication" buzzspeak you can read in comments before it sounds like the same ol' thing. When I saw the video, it really hit home (for me) how this could really improve how I collaborate with my company (and friends) online. If the client, especially, is done right, that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a way to see which users are currently online on his test server so we can add them to our waves and help eachother test/play with gadgets?

</comment><comment><USER11> Noscript plays merry hell with the gadgets, to be expected I suppose.

I was hoping the realtime chat/wiki environment would be implemented but if it is I can't find it.</comment>


3D LED printer makes a contact lens display possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/chips/3d-led-printer-makes-a-contact-lens-display-possible-1610256/ <comment><USER2> Jesus, these comments are so pessimistic. As of now, the three top-level comments are "Wouldn't this cause headaches?", "Wouldn't these have a uselessly small viewing area?", and "Wouldn't these be too blurry?". Come on, people; have some imagination. These aren't even show-stopping physical limitations (which humanity has sidestepped thousands of times before); these are relatively minor engineering problems.

Even as someone with essentially no experience in this area, I can think of a few potential solutions to the complaints thus far. The eye strain and focus issues are solved by using pre-collimated laser light instead of LEDs. Our fabrication isn't quite there, but again, it's an engineering challenge. The viewing area size is expanded by eye tracking (possibly via sensors in the contact lens).

It's good to question these sorts of things, but at least start with interesting questions!

<comment><USER3> There is a lot of hype out there so many stories are welcome with skepticism. The advantage is that you can post here more technical details.

I still don't understand how you are going to focus an image that is jut on the top of the cornea. The lens of the eye can't adjust to this distance. For example, Google glass has some external lens so the virtual monitor image is far enough. (I n't find good digrm now, but this is an interesting discussion [http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19plgu/how_can_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19plgu/how_can_google_glass_produce_a_sharp_visible/) )

Do you have a diagram that shows how the image will be formed in the retina?

(I also think that the saccades are a problem, but I don't know enough about that subject to weight the technical information.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article talks about power requirements and the manufacturing process, but seems to leave out that any image projected into your eye from 0cm away will be blurry beyond recognition. The eye won't be able to focus on it. Has research overcome this limitation? It's very interesting to think that it's possible to project a sensible image into an eye from point blank.

<comment><USER5> That's only the case if the LEDs transmit light in a broad cone or hemisphere. If the cones are very tight (like at laser in the most extreme incarnation), you can point the light sources at different angles and force it to map onto the retina properly. The important point is to reduce the circles of confusion acceptably. You don't necessarily need them to be zero radius.

<comment><USER6> Microlenses!

The article Geek.com links to located: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented- realit...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a- contact-lens/0)

is probably a better read.

<comment><USER7> Or wait until contact lens displays with Retina resolution (the Apple iEye, perhaps)? :-)

<comment><USER8> The Retina(tm) retina!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'This rabbit got to wear an "active contact lens," and showed no observable ill effects.' sounds so much better than 'animal testing has so far suggested no observable ill effects'

</comment><comment><USER10> Unless I missed something when we were covering eye physiology at uni, contact lens screens are useless. The area we can actually attend to and process data is tiny, which means the screen has to be directly in the center of the contact.

For example: A physically separate screen means you can swivel your eyeball and look at a different bit of text on a book page, or a different character on a movie screen. With a contact lens display the content you are attending to is always on the center and swiveling your eyeball to change targets will do nothing.

<comment><USER11> Pair it with eye tracking. Main problem I see with it is LEDs on a contact lens wouldn't be in focus, at least without some other optics to make them more directional.

<comment><USER12> That problem seems reasonably solvable.

The main problem I see is that saccades are _ridiculously_ fast, so not only does the eye tracking have to be extremely precise, but the latency for the track-update-display pipeline has to be tiny.

This problem is already difficult for head motion. Doing it at the eyeball level is way more ambitious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't something like this cause extreme eye-strain and/or headaches? Even if you could make sense of the display...

<comment><USER8> You don't have to focus on a screen that's that close to your eye. The pixels are so small and so close to your eye that the light doesn't disperse much before it hits your retina. That means the dots of light will seem to be in focus no matter how you focus your eyes.

<comment><USER14> That is not true; please be careful to do research before posting so you don't spread misinformation.

If a light source is diffuse/omnidirectional, then it will be blurrier the farther it is from the distance your eye is focusing on.

Only if the light is a ray (a collimated beam with very little spread and very small diameter), such as the ray produced by a laser, then it will be in focus regardless of the distance at which it is produced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somehow the first thing that came to my mind is "contact lens low-light amplifiers" (e.g. for military use or driving vehicles at night). I'm not really sure this would be at all possible, but I find the idea much more intriguing than contact lens HUDs.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm imagining the Blue Screen of Death filling your area of vision.</comment>


My journey with Kotlin – Part 1: How I came to dislike Java - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ippon.tech/my-journey-with-kotlin-part-1-how-i-came-to-dislike-java/ <comment> java-man I would not hire this guy.</comment>


The Secret History Of Hacking [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9rL6-nvP4

<comment><AUTHOR> The stories may be familiar to many, but I hadn't seen this particular documentary before...

Plus, it's got Woz.

</comment><comment><USER2> It goes out of sync, better find another source.</comment>


Nginx Plus R15 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-plus-r15-released/ <comment><USER2> "There are now more than 1,500 NGINX Plus customers and 409 million million users of NGINX Open Source."

409 million million users :)

<comment><USER3> If all 1500 paying customers have basic support, and have an average of 1.8 server instances (and are paying sticker prices) ...

1500 * $2500 * 1.8 = $6,750,000

Not too bad...

<comment><USER4> what was your rationale for 1.8? just curious.

<comment><USER5> It's pretty common to have more than one instance dedicated to handling http requests whether it proxy, or call and response from a web app.

I would personally set the average to 3 from my particular viewpoint.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but 1.8 is oddly specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nevi-me Does the open source NGINX distro support gRPC out of the box, or with plugins? I stopped using NGINX in favour of nghttpx (and Caddy for http1.x) when I started using gRPC.

I think before gRPC became popular, the story from NGINX was that it didn't make sense to support supporting h2 in the backend [0], I'm glad they eventually changed the decision.

[0] ttps://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/923

<comment><USER7> _Support for gRPC was introduced in NGINX Open Source 1.13.10_

(I assume this means it's supported out of the box, but have never tried it myself)

<comment><USER8> Works out of the box, and I'm currently using it to load balance over TF- Serving -- works pretty well.

<comment> nevi-me I wouldn't know where/how to start with benchmarking nghttpx, nginx and Caddy; but it would be great to see performance benchmarks of the 3 in relation to h2/gRPC.

I wouldn't mind switching back to nginx as its config was easier to manage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


White House Tried To Interfere With Washington Post's Report - Suraj-Sun http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130816/01314924200/white-house-tried-to-interfere-with-washington-posts-report-to-change-quotes-nsa.shtml

<comment><AUTHOR> I am interested in reading the 90 minute interview transcript, the finished article and the prepared statement from the White House to compare the three and then make a judgement on the WH's action.

</comment><comment><USER2> Aaaaand... the Russian Reversal practically writes itself.</comment>


But, miraculously, the money lasted... - <AUTHOR> http://www.cartoonbank.com/2000/The-Internet-startup-had-only-enough-cash-for-one-more-day-But-miraculously-the-money-lasted/invt/120230 <comment><USER2> Yum... it's only $195 for that image to be printed on a delicious, velvet paper.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how the joke is explained below the caption.

"The chicken is no longer on the same side of the road as before."</comment>


The Internet Loves a Rest Stop in Breezewood, Pennsylvania - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/07/breezewood-meme-pennsylvania-turnpike-i-70-rest-stop-photos/594559/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I do a long highway trip I can't help but notice how often I pass "one of everything". By that I mean when I'm hungry I don't have to wonder where I will eat, I know that within 10 miles I will find some exit with a few fast food chains, a fast casual restaurant, 2 gas stations, an a motel. You don't have to ask "Where is the McDonalds" you ask "Where is the NEXT McDonalds" because you know you probably are between two.

I find this tiny bit of Americana comforting. I don't know if there is another country so large that is so consistently developed. There are so few places in America where you might end up out of range of these basic comforts, despite our fairly massive landmass.

<comment><USER3> Try doing that on a north to south trip from walla walla to Las Vegas. There are still places in the USA where "next services, 150 miles" is common. I love those drives.

<comment><USER4> Me too. These are the best sort of road trips, where you still need to plan things out and when you do finally stop it's a dusty service station with a local diner next door, not another McDonalds.

<comment><USER5> It definitely takes longer, but this is why I avoid interstate highways if I have the time. I also find pathfinding and turning more fun than passing.

<comment><USER3> You wouldn't have much choice for most of the route unless you decided to detour onto I15, adding an extra hour to the trip with worse scenery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suppose it literally "could be only be one place", but it looks almost identical to thousands of small towns across the US. My entire childhood roadtrip experience was up and down the west coast on I-5, and you could absolutely convince me this was somewhere like Grant's Pass, OR, if not for the signs with PA route information on them. You'd have to convince me a chain or two (Perkins, Sunoco) expanded westward in the past few years, but that wouldn't take much doing.

I still don't quite follow this line:

> "highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the > turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to"

That seems no different from any other exit (you could hypothetically avoid any toll road by exiting and stopping and just staying wherever you are), but I guess the actual 'bypass' function of this road in the real world is less important than what it's come to be.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I can't agree with the author in saying that its "uniquely" Breezewood; this could be a picture of pretty much any "exit directly off the interstate" in especially the midwest, though likely around most of America. Towns like this pop up around interstates; it seems like interstates are planned to go near smaller towns, but not through them, so the town "creeps" over to the interstate and you end up with all the new developments happening over there, like big chain restaurants. And, of course, gas stations, because that just makes sense. I could point to three dozen towns between Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee that are like this.

<comment><USER8> I can confirm that this also looks like many places in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Less so, but also in Washington and Oregon.

The photo (mainly due to use of the telephoto lens) provides a sort of dense charicature, but the overall look can be found in lots of places. Not the most beautiful aspect of the US, but a reasonable one. We're a huge, sparsely populated country where many people still get around by way of long driving trips. If you've been on the road for eight hours and you and the kids are hangry, often you want some gas and a reliable, safe, familiar meal. Gas stations and fast food chains provide that.

Criticizing these photos is a bit like criticizing a landfill or sewage treatment plant as reflecting on the beauty of an entire area. It's essentially utilitarian infrastructure. It's ugly, sure, but you can't have everything be ivy-covered brick and artisanal bakeries.

<comment><USER9> It's Highwayland.

Highwayland is the America that connects the other Americas together. It spans the entire continent by itself, but everywhere else is only a short drive from it. No one lives there, but everybody passes through. The interstate highway system didn't create Highwayland, but homogenized and unified it.

Everyone is a little bit comfortable in Highwayland, but also a little bit bored. It has McDonald's, Subway, Taco Bell, a Cracker Barrel, a 4-story 1-corridor hotel with indoor pool and fitness center that offers free copies of USA today in the lobby, a 2-story discount motel where the room doors open to the parking lot, the dine-in restaurant open from 6 to 10, two gas stations or truck stops across the road from each other, each with their own bustling convenience stores that sell sausages, egg rolls, and round tacos that cook on the hot dog roller, with 128-oz fountain drinks, all for $4.

If it were too interesting, people wouldn't want to leave, and the transit dimension would clog up with loiterers and squatters.

You can take a photo of Highwayland from anywhere in Highwayland, and see all the same features, but you can also strike out in a random direction from Highwayland, travel 15 minutes, and find a place unlike anywhere else on Earth, with its own local character that is instantly identifiable to anyone that has ever been there.

Sometimes the local character is strong enough to overwhelm Highwayland, just for a few miles (Highwayland abhors kilometers), and the uniqueness seeps in. Maybe you can see the city skyline, or a university campus, or a hospital. It doesn't happen often, though. Highwayland craves sameness. Mostly, it is the realm of the consistent, the predictable, and the reliable.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your comment! It was a very enjoyable read, and in its style is reminiscent of some older mystery novel authors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pennsylvania Highway Interchange Popular Among Web Users as Symbol of American Homogeneity

Due to a quirk of a now-defuct law causing an abundance of low speed traffic, an unusually dense set of typical off-interstate chain stores and restaurants sprung up around a Breezewood, PA interstate exit. This location has become popular among Web users for creating photos embodying the homogeneity and cultural sterility of such places.

There, headline and first couple sentences of a non-clickbait article for you.

<comment><USER12> If you read the article, you'd discover that it's _not_ unusually dense. The photographer in question, Edward Burtynsky, spent three days finding the right location. He rented a scissor lift and shot from several stories up, with a zoom lens, giving an impression of density you can't see from the ground.

<comment><USER13> That's a good example of how the lies of art can create a greater truth. It's rare to see all the big corporate logos superimposed on different parts of the field of view, rather like the sponsorship patches on the jacket of a NASCAR driver, but it speaks to a real experience of one gas station, diner or fast food place after another that is encountered across interstate America.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love this photo because to me it represents a sort of "American Gothic". I've spent most of my life in America and I can confirm that, as many of the linked tweets say, it does look like that "most of the time." The Breezewood rest stop is exceptional in that it is the platonic ideal: it looks far more like everywhere than anywhere. You don't have to have been there to have been there.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a person who grew up in Washington DC with most of my family in Chicago, I have many, many, many memories of sitting in awful traffic going through Breezewood.

With that said I think the central premise of this article is mostly false. There are a _lot_ of places in the US, typically at major interstate highway junctions, that look exactly like this.

<comment><USER16> For people who haven't dealt with Breezewood traffic, it can mean sitting in the right lane of the Pennsylvania Turnpike for a mile of stop-and-go traffic (while the left lane is going 60mph!) and spending an hour to actually make it the short gap to get back onto I-70. Trying to cross US-30 to hit your favorite establishment is not worth it--if it's not on the right side of the road, don't bother.

What doesn't help is that the PA Turnpike is pretty stingy with its rest stops, especially in the western half of the state. Most states have rest stops at about a 30mi cadence, but you've got ~70mi from the last rest stop in PA to the OH border and closer to ~50mi cadence--assuming the rest stops aren't closed for reconstruction. So even those rest stops are pretty crowded, to the point where you can have the driver get in line for gas and everyone else go to the bathroom, wait in a line that stretches out the door, and still get back to the car before it reaches the pump.

<comment><USER15> You're also leaving out the fact that the turnpike has the surface consistency of a cheese grater and often no shoulders at all.

<comment><USER16> Still better than I-70 between Washington, PA and the turnpike though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The meme is definitely oversized - Breezewood is pretty small. If you feel this is somehow representative of America then you must have been asleep through the vast miles of farmland and wooded hills leading up to it and stretching forever beyond it.

<comment><USER18> It makes sense if one focuses on human constructed attractions, especially if one is confined to major travel routes with the goal of getting to a destination.

I think part of what makes this photo look unique to many is that Pennsylvania sits between the extremes of the Northeast's planned rest stops, and the Midwest's natural four-corners ones - so it's exceptional from both. It's larger than one standard concrete building with pluggable vendors, and it's denser than fuel stops with truck scales, overnight parking, etc. Pennsylvania also has this hilly thing going on that tends to concentrate, hide, and focus business gatherings.

Travelling across the country, the real depressing pattern is McDonalds ahead 10 miles, ... 5 miles, ... 2 miles, ... 1 mile, .... half mile, "turn around you missed McDonalds!", next McDonalds 36 miles, repeat. I believe the bigger rest stops actually break the homogeneity by offering more variety. But on longer distances, one actually comes to see the value in chains - predictability. And I say this as someone who goes out of my way to avoid chains.

Of course that's all still focused on the commercial infrastructure that supports travelers. If you're roadtripping, especially west of Pennsylvania (ie clear of the Megalopolis), and not basking in the novel landscape, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER17> I think we agree.

In Pennsylvania ("Penn's Woods") the under-developed landscape still towers so gigantically above the developed landscape that I wonder what people think they are seeing during travel. Of course, things pop up to serve the travelers along the highway, so the from-the-highway view is not truly typical, but still. The developed landscape seems all that is considered.

But I see a Pennsylvania that is vast and filled with forest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Huh...I stop at that exact spot. A lot. Mostly because it's a good spot to fuel up before (as I do) one disappears for 50 miles onto PA back roads (and 50 miles back...) with no more gas stations. I never realized it was 'a thing', but it _is_ a decent place to stop.

</comment><comment><USER20> If the internet loves this they need to go to Houston. This is every intersection.

<comment><USER21> It's same with a lot of the rural south too. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas. I grew up driving past these types of towns all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To me this seems like taking a photo of a sausage factory and saying: This is what Italian food is like.

Err... yes. It's the worst part of the food creation process. Ugly and brutal.

This is a big part of America. The highway systems and the towns and businesses that support it.

Like sausage making is to Italian food. But I feel that seeing this and saying 'this is it', is unfairly failing to see the larger whole. This is the method that allows American's to travel anywhere within their country in a super efficient way that other countries can only dream of. Where I'm originally from, if you can plot a 100 mile line from where I was to some destination I wanted to go, it was a 200 mile road trip that would take 7-8 hours. Here in America, most destinations within a 100 mile radius take a 120~ mile drive which will take under 2 hours. I have explored a ton of places in this country because of the ease of moving around. The sausage factory sucks, but I do love sausage.

</comment><comment><USER23> I randomly ran into an old high school friend at a gas station in Breezewood. We were living 2000 miles apart at the time and were traveling in separate directions and just happened to meet. A few years later, in his late 30s, he contracted skin cancer and died, and that chance meeting in Breezewood was the last time I saw him.

</comment><comment><USER24> The internet is so big... I have never seen this meme before.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been through Breezewood hundreds of times. The tagline on old postcards used to be: "Breezewood, The Town of Motels". Though, there seems to be fewer now than I remember.

It's effectively a supersized rest-stop consisting of a drag of fast-food chains, motels and gas stations. The article is right, and it's pretty unmistakable if you've been there before. Yeah, depending on your point of view it's a hyperreal mash-up of everything that's wrong in the American urban landscape.

There really is nothing to do there other than pee or get gas.

If you _are_ up that way and want to stop somewhere interesting that's nearby...

Bedford PA ([http://www.downtownbedford.com/](http://www.downtownbedford.com/)) -- has a charming historic "mainstreet" with interesting shops, restaurants and festivals.

Bedford Springs Resort (not far from Bedford), is posh old hotel with superb spa with natural spring water and access to some really good hiking. Sort of like that hotel in "The Shining", except without horror. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_Bedford_Springs_Resort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_Bedford_Springs_Resort))

</comment><comment><USER26> If you want the almost exact opposite of Breezewood visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I tell people it's like time travelling back to the fifties. I can remember when there wasn't a single fast food restaurant up there.

Even today it's been voted the most McUnderEndowed area in the United States.

[http://www.datapointed.net/2009/10/distance-to-nearest- mcdon...](http://www.datapointed.net/2009/10/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds- midwest/)

It does have some pretty cool taverns and in fact a father-son duo wrote a book just on the U.P.'s bars.

[https://www.amazon.com/Yooper-Finest-Michigans-Peninsula- Sep...](https://www.amazon.com/Yooper-Finest-Michigans-Peninsula- September/dp/B015X49GTS)

If you go have a pastie and if you're brave go out at night hunting YooperLite rocks that glow in the dark.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've probably traveled through Breezewood a few hundred times over the decades. What's strange to me is that it never seems to change. The photo from 2008 looks pretty much the same as now. And, it looked pretty much the same in 1990. With all that traffic, why isn't there more there?

<comment><USER28> Well, a lot of the restaurants are closed too. I think it can only handle so many truck stops and restaurants. It is also largely in the middle of nowhere so I don't the traffic is increasing in any material way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of Stephen Shore's 1975 photograph of La Brea and Beverly ([https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/12...](https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/stephen-shore-beverly-boulevard-and-la-brea-avenue- los-angeles-california-june-21-1975-800x633.jpg)). Lots of photographers have done commentary on this American landscape. Some of my favorites include Anthony Hernandez, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel. Robert Adams' "Summer Nights Walking" feels like strolling through any of these small American towns late at night.

</comment><comment><USER30> I stopped at this exit a dozen times at least. I am genuinely surprised that I have as many distinct memories as I do about a meme about banal American suburbia. I, wildly unsuccessful, tried to flirt with a college crush in that gateway. I got a shitty sub from that quiznos. I was grumpy when I got woken up from a car nap here.

I hate suburbia more than most, but I have alot of memories from this meme of plastic America.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interstate highway America is exactly like that. If you have the time, drive the state roads. Might be a bit slower but the scenery actually changes.

</comment><comment><USER32> The Sheets in Breezewood is one of the few Sheets in the north that have Cheerwine in the soda fountain.

That's why I always stop at Breezewood.

</comment><comment><USER33> The picture in the article shows they still have the very old school Taco Bell sign from way back. I guess if it still works...

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this landscape really as unique as the article wants to portray?

I've been to the US for short trips, Norwalk - CT, Miami, NYC, nothing special about these places but from what I recall you could easily take a similar picture: Chipotle, Macdonalds, Walmart, Subway, Gas stations all lined up in a short stretch of road.

</comment><comment><USER35> I grew up a few hours from Breezewood and we frequently stopped there for food and restrooms on school field trips. Probably looks the same now as it did then

</comment><comment><USER36> It seems to me this entire piece is solely based around the idea that because something a picture of sold for a lot of money can't be ordinary and mundane. I'm sorry, but it is. It's a cookie cutter of which there are thousands. The whole piece left me with somewhat of a condescending "holier than thou" vibe which simply looks like a lot of demagogy. How dare we, ignorant peons make something into a meme that was supposed to be a deep exploratory art narrative on the subject of contemporary culture? Eh, thanks but no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER37> Man, after reading this article I have a sudden urge for some curly fries from an Arby's off the interstate.</comment>


An algorithm to ferret out fake reviews online - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html?_r=2 <comment><USER2> I think it's a losing battle. I've come up with my own way to judge reviews, and if everyone did it that way, it wouldn't be nearly as useful. I'm going to share it anyhow:

I mostly judge by the negative reviews. Reviews can be good or bad for ridiculous reasons. It's easier for me to filter out the bad ridiculous reviews. (UPS didn't arrive on time, item was the wrong shade of blue, etc.)

With the remaining bad reviews, I read to find out WHY they hated the product. If the reasons are things I don't care about (toaster oven doesn't make eggs well) then there's probably nothing about the product I would hate.

I do read the good reviews, too, though. Sometimes there's a good, but hidden, feature that trumps a bad feature. (Toaster oven is perfect size for baking an RROD XBox 360.) But this is pretty seldom.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be great if this algorithm will work out, but as we have seen with other aspects (like google search and SEO) there will be people who can game those algorithms.</comment>


Why K9 won't invest in your app - <AUTHOR> http://www.k9ventures.com/blog/2015/07/01/dead-ant-dead-ant/

<comment><USER2> I would agree if the app only has features to offer and not some kind of community,marketplace, etc around the app.</comment>


Mozilla's Internet health report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://d20x8vt12bnfa2.cloudfront.net/InternetHealthReport_v01.pdf <comment><USER2> All urban or exotic problems.

No mention of how people in the rural U.S. are stuck with DSL.</comment>


Scikit-learn: machine learning in Python - <AUTHOR> http://scikit-learn.org/dev/index.html

<comment><USER2> Great library, great people. Highly recommend it. ogrisel helped me a lot while I was just messing around and I'm forever indebted to him for the amount of 1-on-1 help he decided to dish out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can this library be used for users who viewed/bought this product also viewed/bought these other products? If not, do you know of a python library?

Thanks

<comment><USER4> Yes. it can. Scikit-learn supports algorithms that can be used to build your own recommender system. To scale your algorithms you can always use hadoop map/reduce to scale.

<comment><USER5> Once you use scikit-learn to figure out what you want to do on a reasonable data set, you can use Mahout (<http://mahout.apache.org/>) to translate the algorithm to hadoop pretty easily.

<comment><USER6> You should directly use Mahout: the recsys part is quite complete and high level and application oriented contrary to scikit-learn which does not provide high level recsys concepts.

The best documentation I found is the Mahout in Action book (<http://manning.com/owen/>) while reading the source code in parallel.

Also you probably don't need to run this on a Hadoop cluster unless your data is too big to fit on one single machine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A stealth project disrupted - <AUTHOR>

Warning: Sorry that this is a kinda long post, but I really need some advice on my next steps from follow Hackers.
2 Months back, I had a really brilliant idea. And I'm sure every entrepreneur have their own virtual bucket they use to store all their potential ideas. You would then rank those ideas based on several factors, ie, complexity, revenue model, type of market, etc. And surely, the algorithm is unique to each owns, since everyone has different situation's and priorities. To make the long story short, this idea that I had, was ranked number one on my list of ideas to pursue. It has repeatability being said, alot, that an idea is nothing and its the execution that counts AND there is probably someone else out there who has the same idea OR is probably doing it right now.
Well that happens to be damn true. Yesterday, I read on Techcrunch about a startup that has been around since 2005 and is doing something very similar to my idea.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/trackvia-raises-series-a-for-point-and-click-databases/ Trackvia provides software as a service for transforming ordinary spreadsheets into versatile databases.
In short, my idea has something to do with spreadsheets and is to a certain extend, similar to Trackvia but I strongly believe that my model will appeal more to the target users. Of course my targeted users are closely similar to TrackVia's - Small and Medium Businesses.
So what should I do now? Keep on pursuing this idea of my knowing that there is another well-funded startup that has a 2 year head start ahead of me? Drop the idea, and think about the second on my list? <comment><USER2> This is awesome news. Read this:

<http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html>

 _The big problem with avoiding competition is that you are also avoiding customers. The existence of a competitor indicates the existence of paying customers. If you can't find anyone who is making money with your idea, you really need to wonder if there is any money to be made there at all._

Now you're primed to understand me when I say: Don't give up yet. This startup is doing valuable research for you, and it isn't costing you a dime. See if you can figure out if they're making any money. See if you can find some of their customers and ask them what they think of the product. Try the product. Take their product to one of your potential customers, demo it to them, and see if they like it or not -- think of it as a prototype for your own product, except that all it cost you to develop is the cost of buying a copy from your competitor.

If, perchance, the existing startup has uncovered a huge market for this kind of product, chances are they can't capture the whole market. You can grab some of it. If their product rocks and has a plugin architecture, sell a handy plugin and expand from there. If their product sucks for a certain subset of the market, build your own version. If their product just plain sucks, and they have a market anyway, take them on -- there's gold in them thar hills!

More likely, there is no market and this startup will obligingly discover this for you by building a decent product and then failing anyway. You will learn from their failure, while spending nothing! And they have a three-year head start on their failure, so you might not have to wait too long!

I haven't said anything about the idea, and I don't have time to research it... but based on the one-sentence pitch I urge you to read this and come to terms with it before you proceed:

[http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2003/09/29/5458....](http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2003/09/29/5458.aspx)

It's hard to believe how true that cartoon is until you've lived it. So be careful, or your customer support costs will _eat your business alive_.

<comment><USER3> Every month or so, a comment comes up on hn that is so good it _has_ to become bulletin board material. This is one.

We often get so bogged down in the code, we forget to use common sense. This post, especially the "perchance" paragraph is loaded with options to "find a way". Thanks, mechanical_fish!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "So what should I do now? Keep on pursuing this idea of my knowing that there is another well-funded startup that has a 2 year head start ahead of me? Drop the idea, and think about the second on my list?"

That depends. Is it a big market? Every Coke has a Pepsi, you know and every Nike has a Rebock and Adidas, a New Balance, and ... you get the idea.

You just have to be sure that you can find a way to get a piece of that pie. Is there a certain niche you can target? Are you really able to do something at least comparable to the others, or even better?

You may need a team or to find your own funding to compete.

And I wish you the best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> There is more than one competitor (scroll down to the bottom of the article you linked and you can see a few more).

On one hand, it's validation that it's a good idea. On the other, you have to be convinced that your execution can be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you are referring to Quickbase? Thanks for bringing that up.

<comment><USER5> Hmm. No. I'm referring to Blist and DabbleDB (which are linked at the bottom of the article you posted).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My random thoughts:

Many people talk about "first mover advantage", although often times large companies like Microsoft, Google, etc., prove that there is a larger argument for second or third (or n) mover advantage.

Not to be too harsh, but I doubt many (if any) of us here have ever had a truly unique idea. The fact that somebody else noticed the same hole in the market and attempted to architect a way to fill it is no more noteworthy than the sun rising. My personal opinion is that in most cases this neither validates or nullifies YOUR idea, it is simply one of many variables to take into consideration.

It is very important to be aware of and monitor your competitors in any market. However, if you create a better solution, their existence will be less than a footnote to you. Keep an eye on your competitors, but don't obsess over watching them and worrying when they (or you) solve a particular part of the puzzle differently.

My advice: go and build your solution IF you think it is whole and complete and solves a compelling and valuable problem.

If your entire user market is worth only $5M (and I'm not saying that it is), it doesn't really matter if there are 1 or 100 competitors, NOBODY will make any money anyway :)

</comment><comment><USER7> All you need is paying customers, don't worry about competition.

Also, using your current idea, think about a generalized version of your idea or one that focuses, say only on the financial vertical.

</comment><comment><USER8> Keep going. Competition only proves to validate the worthiness of the idea. Is there only one car manufacturer? Telephone utility? Clothing Store?

Of course not.</comment>


Sad State Of Copyright - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120427/18013118692/sad-state-copyright-guy-using-3-to-10-second-clips-music-viral-videos-accused-infringement.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> Not sure how this stacks up against other fair use guidelines, but I'm pretty sure a 3-10 second sample is within the allowable limits of copyright law[1]. However, there are other qualifications, such as reduced quality that might disqualify his work.

It's still pretty sad. Shows like The Daily Show rely on fair use for a lot of their content and it's hard for me to see a difference between this and much of what they do. Fair use shouldn't only be available to people with expensive lawyers.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Music...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Music_samples#What_is_the_maximum_length_permitted.3F)

</comment><comment><USER3> This happens frequently enough thanks to YouTube's rather non-discriminating python scripts that the value of YouTube is significantly diminished with respect to promoting free and open culture. With all the pandering to copyrightists its been doing, YouTube heading for a steady downward spiral.

Move on to greener pastures, brother. The world welcomes your creative contributions.

Anyone here on HN have some useful suggestion for platforms still respectful of fair use?</comment>


Things you (probably) didn't know about App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/06/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about.html

<comment><USER2> Great tip on batching updates - I knew it was possible, but not so easy to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Multiple versions running simultaneously is awesome. I wish Heroku offered that feature (hint).

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you do XSLT in Python on App Engine yet?</comment>


Announcing Dart 2 Optimized for Client-Side Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dartlang/announcing-dart-2-80ba01f43b6 <comment><AUTHOR> Google currently seem to be pushing on Dart and Flutter [1] as a new mobile development platform. Its appeal is the support for both prominent mobile OS, Android/iOS and the promising new one Fuschia [2].

[1] [https://flutter.io/](https://flutter.io/) [2] [https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, this has been posted several time before, eg. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16440516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16440516)

So, to add some new value for someone coming along accidentally, I would point out that Dart has native support for reactive stream [3], along with additional reactivex/rxdart [4], which makes it comfortable to adopt to current reactive trending.

[3] [https://www.dartlang.org/tutorials](https://www.dartlang.org/tutorials) [4] [https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxdart](https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxdart)</comment></comment>


Tips for Founders Sales: Lessons from Starting Two B2B Startups - <AUTHOR> http://philstrazzulla.com/2020/04/06/tips-for-founders-sales-lessons-from-starting-two-b2b-startups/ <comment><USER2> "Working out of one of their offices side by side is a great way to hear how they talk, what they care about, etc."

I've heard this suggested occasionally, how does this ask usually work? Besides the fact that our clients aren't near where we're based, it feels socially strange asking to impose on someone's office for a day - I must be missing something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Companies who are potential early customers are also usually growth stage startups themselves (100-500 people) and want to help out other entrepreneurs. Email the founders to tell them what you're up to, and tell them you won't be a drag on productivity. A company like this almost certainly also has extra office space as they rent for growth.

</comment></comment><comment> alex-wallish I just launched a bootstrapped B2B product today (also in the recruiting space). I've never sold a thing in my life before, but have suddenly been trying to learn how to be as effective at sales as possible.

Today I got some significant interest from a couple of fortune 500 companies and got some serious imposter syndrome. Any advice for dealing with imposter syndrome as a defacto sales leader with zero sales experience?

<comment><USER3> Imposter syndrome or just not sure where to go? If it's the latter, there's a structure to enterprise deals that you can usually follow.

1st uncover the buyer journey with some form of this question: "Just so I can help plan accordingly, let's imagine your company decides to move forward, what does the purchase process at your company look like?" Try to unearth all the steps they need to go through (is it out of their personal budget, department budget, VPs budget? Are there other groups we'll need approval from and what does their process look like? (IT, Legal, etc). How long does it usually take to close a purchase and get a vendor paid in your firm?

The goal is to uncover the end to end process that results in $$s early so you can plan accordingly. If the process takes 18months and requires deep IT and Legal approval - make sure you're priced high enough to absorb the pre-sales time & labor.

And when pricing comes up - if you have a well established market, then price within the norms (your champion isn't using their own money, they're using the company's - they just need to justify the cost). If the product is a new category, price the product to organizational value. If your product reduces the number of sourcing staff or multiplies their effectiveness - a typical strategy is to show the business impact. Perhaps Salary of HR hires saved + number of good hires * impact factor on business (whatever works best to show $$s of impact to the business). Then charge a fraction of that value yearly.

There are a bunch of great books on enterprise sales, but 99% of it after showing value is uncovering the purchase plan and helping nurture your champion (and possibly others) to accomplish the sale to their internal stakeholders for you.

And as a previous commenter said before - don't worry about pricing it perfectly. Fit the budget they have today and readjust next budget cycle or during next year's renewals.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of these types of posts about B2B assume you are selling a product >$1k... there are lots of B2B that are for less than that and so you can't really apply most of these approaches.

<comment><USER5> If you're selling a B2B product for <$1K, you'll probably need the customer to come to you instead of you reaching out to them. This could be through strong marketing and branding.

I only have experience with >$1K B2B which implied outbound sales (company contacts potential customers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These advices are good, though the same can be seen in other articles pulling recommendations together.

What would be good to see, are the conclusions and takeaways after applying these. What works for real, what was the combination which lead to the first sale, what is needed for repeatable sales.

<comment><USER7> These tips are OK, but they miss, in my view, two essential components. My background is ten years as CTO and sales lead from founding to cashing out at a B2B software startup.

The two key points:

1) Know your product. Know it inside out, what it can do, what it will do, what it can't and won't do, and why those things are the case. You should be able to answer any question, and you should know the metrics you'll inevitably be asked about like your mother's phone number. If you're a founder doing sales, this is doubly important, as it not only answers the question, but shows that you are deeply involved in the business/product, which brings me to

2) Passion. If you're passionate and excited about your product, even the most stone-faced pessimist will be wanting to sign a contract by the end of the pitch. Enthusiasm is contagious. Have your story and why you set out to provide this solution ready to go, and tell it. Narrative tells people why you're passionate, and allows them to share that narrative, that passion.

I converted almost every pitch I made, to the tune of £100M or so over the years - early days, sales of £10k each, a dozen a year. When I left, I was selling as many £5M three year contracts each year with the same core two points. I don't say this to brag, just to underscore that these aren't scale- limited factors, and that as a founder, this is a pretty solid strategy - particularly if you're selling to other founders.

The hardest hurdle was filling in the RFPs - always different, always asking the wrong questions. All that worked there was putting in the hours.

<comment><USER8> I just started a B2B software startup and my cofounder and I are looking for all the sales advice/mentorship we can get. Is there any chance we could talk to you sometime? My contact info is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I convinced myself to start a B2B business[1] by telling myself that I wouldn't need to do this. I'm pretty sure I was wrong.

[https://millenniumsoftwaredesign.com/](https://millenniumsoftwaredesign.com/)

<comment><USER10> See this? "BRINGING LOW COST, FLEXIBILITY, AND FREEDOM TO EDA"

Put it in the location and font size of the Millenium Software Design above it.

I had to read the whole page before I could figure out what you sold. And I knew what EDA was beforehand. Still had to figure out if what I understood as EDA was the same thing you sold.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always cast a wide net when thinking conceptually about what "sales" is, especially when I was a founder and de-facto lead salesman for years. For the longest I considered sales to be just another flavor of persuasion, and at it's very best it's almost pedagogical.

However now, I think I'd rather just not be in business than do sales. That's really just a recognition that sales is an absolutely necessary part of all businesses, and how terrible I personally find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> What made you change your mind to view it as so horrible?

<comment><USER11> I haven't sat and gotten deeply introspective about it, but when I think about all the trips and dinners and conferences etc I went to in order to build relationships to get a same, it feels deeply icky that the root of those relationships was a desire for a financial transaction.

I think we actually did as well as we did, in part because being rooted in a transaction felt so wrong that I actually tried to build relationships with the people I was trying to sell to, in a way that wasn't purely transactional. I'm actually still friendly with some of those people who bought from us today.

<comment><USER12> Did you believe the cost/benefit was in the purchasers favor? Or were you cynical about the solution/value of solution?

I'm a purchaser of enterprise software. This is something I try to gauge from the sales rep. There's a lot of risk in buying software that doesn't actually solve the problems you face and you typically don't find this out until well into integration.

<comment><USER11> Yes, we had an amazing product and we could stand on firm conversion/engagement numbers - fundamentally it was a marketing/experience product for retailers. For reference I was the Founder/CEO and we were a computer vision company with mobile AR products for retailers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was published in April 2020, but I'm guessing it wasn't written in the last month:

> Spend as much time in person with your prospects as possible. That means > demos, as well as conferences, dinners, coffee, whatever you can. This will > allow you to build trust, and learn a lot faster about your customer than > doing calls or even video calls. Working out of one of their offices side by > side is a great way to hear how they talk, what they care about, etc.

<comment><USER14> Or it was written assuming that people may read it in the future when this whole situation we are in (I hope) has blown over.

Also, Phil (original author), if you're reading these comments, hi!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey man!

Ya it was written to be more evergreen content...hoping that the world reverts to normal at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Starting two B2B startups is easy and while there's lessons to be learned in failing, before reading your advice...one must ask/know if you financially succeeded in either via profit/exit? Sorry, the title isn't clear.

<comment><USER16> > Sorry, the title isn't clear.

If only the there was more to the title - like a link to an article that answers your question in literally the first paragraph.

<comment><USER15> We all evaluate if the click trough is worth it based on the title, and in this case looking for tips on success, not starting (the easiest part).</comment></comment></comment>


Changing Your Diet Can Help Tamp Down Depression, Boost Mood - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/09/768665411/changing-your-diet-can-help-tamp-down-depression-boost-mood <comment><USER2> Our family starts dinner with salad. For young toddlers, this can be annoying to them, but they eventually get used to it, especially when they realize they don't get the 'yummy' food later in the meal unless they finish their salad.

Our guests are always surprised to see the kids eating so much salad for dinner now, and our oldest recently even stopped adding dressing (8 y.o).

It seems you want to start humans young in the quest to get a good taste for vegetables, because I know many adults that just can't stand them (didn't have them as children).

<comment><USER3> I had plenty of vegetables as a kid. Still hate (most of) them.

Not everything is learnt.

<comment><USER4> Do you hate them objectively speaking or in comparison with other food?

<comment><USER5> I'm also interested in this as "hate" is such a strong word for food. Say, brussels sprouts aren't my favourites but I'll empty my plate of them, while celery stalks have such a strong, unpleasant taste that I'll remove them from my plate. It's hard to imagine people having this celery-level of distaste to majority of vegetables, as they are generally very mild-tasting.

<comment><USER6> There are reports that there is a genetic component to taste - especially for brussels sprouts. Oregano (cilantro) tasting like soap is another reported genetic link.

I'm the other way round from you: sprouts taste bitter, but celery is crunchy nothingness.

<comment><USER7> oregano and cilantro are completely unrelated

<comment><USER8> I believe he meant coriander (although coriander is usually the seeds of the plant)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I dunno for me. I try to eat healthy and keep my weight down, but I'm happiest when I'm eating poorly. I get kind of run down and depressed when it's meal after meal of veggies and chicken, or just small portions of whatever. A pizza and a soda, or a huge steak and garlic mashed potatoes will lift my mood quickly. Then it's very hard to go back to healthy again. There's no question eating healthy helps my physical wellbeing though, so I do it.

<comment><USER10> Big, big fat disclaimer — not a doctor, not a nutritionist, but I am actively enrolled in the school of hard knocks.

Soda specifically is going to give you a nice big dose of sugars which your brain is just going to love. But what you're also doing is kinda training your brain — well when I had that massive pure sugar dose I felt great, now I'm eating chicken and veggies, and wtf where's the feel-good rush?

There's nothing really wrong with that either if you're at peace and doing as you're doing, eating a holistically healthy diet. But I do wonder in audience with clinical depression — if those people might be gravitating towards foods that offer quick pick-me-ups that make them feel like themselves finally, but overall make their depression worse especially when the effect is quickly wears off

<comment><USER11> I'm no expert, either, but I'm pretty well convinced that sugar is addictive. It offers a similar quick mood bump to what I used to experience from nicotine. And, like nicotine, it turns out that I felt like crap for a good long while when I decided to stop consuming it regularly. _And_ , like nicotine, eventually I pushed through that phase and found that my overall sense of well-being had noticeably improved.

And one of the dirty tricks our brains play on us is, a quick but short-lived mood bump is more salient than a constant improvement.

FWIW, for my purposes, "sugar" maybe has more to do with the blood sugar spike than chemistry. Mashed potatoes would count, insofar as, at least according to the tables I've seen, mashed potatoes have just about the highest glycemic index money can buy.

<comment><USER12> I think I agree with the idea but isn't saying sugar is addictive because you feel bad with out it is like saying protein is bad because you feel bad with out. It's somewhat necessary

<comment><USER13> Is _added_ sugar necessary, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This year I cut all added-sugar from my diet. I've seen huge reductions in depression, anxiety, and exhaustion.

<comment><USER15> Did you experience a week-month long increased depression after cutting sugar? That's quite common and one of the reasons why people can't do it at will. Sugar does some nice things to neurotransmitters.

<comment><USER14> My symptoms from sugar* had gotten worse than any perceived withdrawal.

*Extreme fatigue, sometimes persisting through 12 hours of sleep.

<comment><USER15> Check candida or fungi infection; it's possible your gut microbiome has some deficiency as well. Also, you might be pre-diabetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Been experimenting with this and related concepts (intermittent fasting) lately and noticed a pretty swift improvement in mental fog, joint pains and reduced need for sleep, faster recovery from exercise.

Can't speculate as to where the benefit is coming from (IF or maybe I was previously eating something I'm sensitive to?) but clearly something is working.

<comment><USER17> Did you change the contents of your meals when you changed to fasting, or kept them the same over different time periods?

For myself, intermittent fasting meant it was easier for me to maintain weight rather than gaining, largely because I removed a 400 calorie meal, a 150 calorie morning snack, and a 9PM bedtime snack from my diet.

However, when I changed diets completely for a month during a Whole30, I dropped quite a few pounds and felt much better as far as mental clarity and energy levels.

(Unfortunately I have not maintained that healthier diet, but plan to attempt it again!)

<comment><USER16> >Did you change the contents of your meals when you changed to fasting

Changed it. Currently eating a small subset of foods that I'm likely not sensitive to (chicken, rice, mushroom, various veg, blueberries, figs). That seems balanced enough that I can probably safely sustain it for a while. Googling kicked up a bunch of directly contradictory info on what helps w/ inflammation so I'm just winging it.

But at about 700/2000 calorie intake. All 700 at night, so fasting 23 hrs per day basically while running a crazy high deficit. Surprised how normal/better I feel with that crazy schedule.

<comment><USER17> OK. So it's harder to narrow down where the benefits are coming from. It could be a combination of the two!

But I find FODMAPs and Whole 30 to be useful starting places. Glad you found a collection of foods that work for you. (And I love mushrooms, blueberries and figs!)

<comment><USER16> I did look at FODMAPs too. I think it caused much of my gas. So took some inspiration from that, but it's tricky:

e.g. FODMAPs says definitely no garlic. While a Harvard "endorsed" anti- inflammation diet said eat lots of garlic.

Beans, lentils etc...it's all over the place depending on whom you listen to. :(

I'll have a look at Whole30 - never heard of it. Also seeing lots of chat about "Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen" on /r/plantbaseddiet

>Glad you found a collection of foods that work for you.

So far so good. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the PLOS paper >To assist in complying with diet recommendations, participants in the diet change group each received a small hamper of food items including olive oil (Cobram Estate), natural nut butter (Mayvers), nuts and seeds (walnuts, almonds, pepitas, sunflower seeds) and spices (cinnamon, turmeric). They were told to keep their shopping receipts in order to receive a $60 gift card as reimbursement for study foods. Participants in the diet change group also received a brief, 5-minute phone call on Day 7, Day 14 to ask if they were having any difficulties adhering to the diet and troubleshoot problems with reference to the prescribed handouts. Participants in the habitual diet group were given no instructions regarding diet, and were simply asked to return after 3 weeks for follow up. [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0222768)

So if you enroll subjects in a study, give them attention, free food, gift card, phone calls, etc. then after three weeks they will feel less depressed than a group of subjects for which nothing was done.

It would be more convincing if they had a third group that they fed blue cheese bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, diet Coke and Lil Debbie cakes from a convenience store. I'd bet even money that the third group would have been less depressed too.

<comment><USER19> Great point! I bet the junk food group will still feel better (less depressed) than the group being left alone, unless they were somehow constantly being reminded about the "bad quality" of the food they were eating. It's all about long-term vs short-term state of mind. And three weeks is just too short.

<comment><USER20> >t's all about long-term vs short-term state of mind.

I think the point is the "state of mind" is a product of everything else going on in the body. It will be infinitely more difficult to have a positive state of mind while your body is contending with chronic inflammation and your unhealthy gut isn't producing serotonin. Your right 3 weeks isn't enough, but biomarkers can be dramatically improved in 3 weeks with change of diet, especially with respect to chronic inflammation.

<comment><USER18> They did a 3-month followup: >Of the 33 individuals who were able to be contacted, 7 (21.2%) said they had maintained the diet, 19 (57.6%) reported they had maintained some aspects of the diet and 7 (21.2%) reported they had not maintained the diet. There was no difference in depression outcomes between these 3 groups (chi-square >.05).

They don't seem to have done the 3-month follow up with the control group.

<comment><USER21> It's super tiny group anyway - the experiment is highly underpowered even if they did check control group.

Most importantly it is not a cross design, and even that would need in excess of hundred patients to be meaningful. As is they can be measuring the effect of attention and any kind of change on depression, given some genetic, phenotypical or environmental susceptibilities incidentally found in their treatment group.

Meaning the conclusion is not possible to generalize.

These tiny studies, especially of low quality and poor design are an annoying waste of time and money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As an Australian I'm stoked to see NPR cite research happening in universities here.

Also interesting to think about how you would possibly conduct a blind study for diet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the placebo effect strong here? It's hard to have any kind of sham Mediterranean diet for the control participants. The dieters know they are dieters, doesn't that knowledge- "I'm doing something for my health" influence the depression as much as nutrition?

<comment><USER24> I don't doubt the benefits of a good diet, I've seen it myself, but having been depressed enough to where I couldn't even eat, there was no way munching on some whole grains or kale was going to bring me out of it. Only a more put- together person can start thinking about improving their diet. Which I eventually did, but that was long after I escaped the worst of my depression.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I'm never too impressed by these. Once I have control over my depressive states, I can start looking at things like exercise or diet. But if I'm highly depressed, those things end up on the back burner and I'm much more interested in solutions to _that_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not particularly surprising. The microbiome–gut–brain axis has been a subject of interest for a decade and a half now, and it's been suggested that the influence that mood disorders have on appetite and sleep actually swings both ways.

Anecdotally, taking deliberate control of my meal habits (and sticking to them even when my appetite goes nuts) really helps episodes go easier.

</comment><comment><USER27> If only I weren't so depressed I could summon the energy to actually give a crap about my diet. I know I should, but when you're burnt out and have zero energy, Chipotle is just easier than driving to a grocery store, buying ingredients, ferrying them home, then preparing them into something decent. Oh, and don't forget the inevitable dishes cleanup.

<comment><USER28> I hate that I can relate. There are times where it seems like I need Herculean energy to shop + cook a meal. Not to mention, doing so removes one of the only events I look forward to (pizza, ice cream, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's been numerous studies showing that Magnesium (and the balance of magnesium vs calcium) plays a crucial role in many bodily function including brain functions and reducing depression.

I suspect what's happening here is that these people are eating more veggies and nuts and whole grains thus getting more magnesium in their diet.

</comment><comment><USER30> A while back I tracked my mood and a bunch of other variables I thought might be related. And what was most surprising when I reviewed six months of data was that total calories was most correlated with being in a good mood.

I guess at least for me a calorie deficit is really depressing.

Also days I ate strawberries were also correlated. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER31> When they say inflammation - which I've read about several times in similar "soft medicine" contexts - do they mean the same inflammation as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation) ?

"The five classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function" \-- surely you don't have these when you eat processed food.

<comment><USER32> Yes, inflammation is inflammation. That said, the symptoms described in the wiki are more related to acute inflammation, such as swelling after you hit your head on a cabinet or something like that.

Dietarily, they're referring more to chronic inflammation, there's info about it here under "chronic inflammation":

[https://www.livescience.com/52344-inflammation.html](https://www.livescience.com/52344-inflammation.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I recommend eating colorful foods, such as cucumber (green), eggplant (purple), lemon (yellow) and so on. Pungent flavors help as well, such as clove, garlic and ginger.

From what I gathered, preparing and eating colorful, pungent food constitutes a large part of enjoyment in the meal, which helps curb hunger and sparks joie de vivre. It's no coincidence that we call "fast food" that way; it's meant to leave us unsatiated and craving for more.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've noticed the biggest indicator of my mood is my carb intake.

I started off trying Keto, but found it very hard to maintain. Now, I simply skip the high carb portions of my meals. Skip potatoes, skip rice, avoid pasta (although black bean pasta is a very good stand in). If I'm craving fast food (damn you Chick-fil-a), simply skipping the fries makes a night and day difference about how terrible I'll feel later in the day.

</comment><comment><USER35> I eat every 20 hours or so nowadays, I think that qualifies as "intermittent starvation" for people here. I still feel like shit.

<comment><USER36> Are you getting enough calories? While fasting can be good for you I highly doubt slowly starving yourself is going to improve your mental state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Talking about boosting / anti-depression food, I got those [https://imgur.com/HJFqlsX](https://imgur.com/HJFqlsX) delicious kakis (called persimmons too) in a friend's garden. I'm thankful to nature for this amazingly delicious and nutritive thing

Eat any seasoned fruit, at will

</comment><comment><USER38> I saw the help of changing diet as well. Along with going to the gym I think both are very helpful for fighting depression.

I am aware that doing anything at all seems very hard when you are depressed but once you start it and see how helpful it is, it gives you even more ambition to continue

</comment><comment> r-w What a coincidence that this article pops up just after a daylong fast for Yom Kippur…

</comment><comment><USER39> Only tangentially related: has anyone else been getting tons of WSJ sponsored articles on Facebook about how ramen can stave off depression?

FB targeting algorithm is only accurate if they think I like ramen :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Also, on the topic of depression - today is world mental health day! Good timing there

</comment><comment><USER40> How is this science</comment>


OmniCISA Pits DHS Against FCC and FTC on User Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.justsecurity.org/28386/omnicisa-worse-privacy-cisa/ <comment><AUTHOR> Granick knows what she's talking about, but I'm tentatively and trepidatiously going to suggest she's misinformed in this case.

The language Granick quotes from "OmniCISA" is not new; it's verbatim from the original CISA bill that passed, overwhelmingly in October, after months of debate, and after the House passed a significantly dumber bill in April.

Further: the budget bill version of CISA I just read does not allow for sharing to include personal information "by default".</comment>


Happy Sysadmin Day - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysadmin_Day

<comment><USER2> To all of the sysadmins that look at server access logs, see requests to "news.ycombinator.com", and, instead of adding a block rule, just smile and nod knowingly:

This one's for you.

<comment><USER3> If they blocked Hacker News or Reddit at work, I would be one unhappy employee.

<comment><USER4> If they blocked Hacker News or Reddit at work, I would be an employee who sets up an SSH tunnel.

<comment><USER3> SSH tunnels are a quick way to get fired here.

<comment><USER2> That's why I always had my SSH running on port 443.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey sysadmins, how did you get there? Are there books, articles, blogs, etc. that helped you significantly? (Frisch's classic comes to mind.) Or is the skill 90% about getting your hands dirty? But then again, how did you go from sandboxed sysadmin to your first real, critical job?

Today is your day. Please write away!

<comment><USER6> Learn to hack on the OS of your choice. Make sure it's fun to you first.

Next, get a job as helpdesk. Go through the pain of being the first person people talk to when stuff it broke. Try to fix it. Always try to fix it before you escalate. Preferably you get this job a mid-size company where you can have the opportunity to get to know the staff in general. Single office, walk around it once a day just saying hi to everyone.

Eventually they'll start to wait for you to make your rounds to get help. You're building relationships.

Get to know the maintenance and security guys in your building. These people need to be your friend. Your systems don't run without power, and you need to be able to get to consoles.

Watch for and take opportunities to get into a sysadmin position. Now, working on the trade skill of being lazy. Every task you do, think about how you can automate it. That's one of the real arts to being a sysadmin, if you have a lot of work that keeps you busy, how are you going to have time to respond to problems.

By taking this route though, you've built up one of the 4 skills I think you need to be a good sysadmin. People skills. Remember, by the time someone has to talk to you they've already had to deal with at least one other person who could not fix their problem. The rest of the skills you get from experience as a sysadmin. Scripting, documenting, creating DR scenarios and such... it's a never ending learning opportunity. If you've learned all there is to learn where you're at, then it's time to move on, unless you just really like it there. As often as not the latter is the case and that's not a bad thing as long as it pays the bills.

The one thing I always tell people who ask me to explain being a sysadmin to them is this. It's a service oriented position. The employees are your customers. The business is your customer. Your boss is your customer. You will hit a point where you think there is a technical answer to everything and you know better than them. You don't. It's not your job to make technology changes to change everything and make it easier. It's your job to implement and maintain what the business users feel they need to use to get their job done. Their positions make money for the organization you work for, your department is nothing but cost. Remember that and you can save yourself a lot of frustration.

Oh... and go home and build yourself a nice home network. This is a job where you take mental tasks home with you, having a place to play is helpful. Also helpful for job interviews.

<comment><USER7> Also take note: Vendors often lie.

<comment><USER8> All vendors lie, some vendors lie compulsively. If certain vendors told me the sky was blue I would go out and check.

<comment><USER6> Ah, another tip. Learn the phrase "it is what it is". It's the answer to everything from lieing vendors to incredibly poor implementations. If you can learnt to accept bad software, implement it in a way it's not going to break the bank to support and move on, you'll find yourself avoiding the path to the "grumpy SA".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Raising a toast to the sleepless nights when I tried becoming a Sysadmin and failed beautifully.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'Official' website: <http://www.sysadminday.com/>

It may have had something to do with the creation of Sysadmin Day, as it predates the first (2000) edition. From whois:

      Creation Date: 09-may-2000

</comment><comment><USER10> Sadly all of our sysadmins have been moved off site and across the country (actually, most of them decided not to move to Texas and quit instead). I'm thinking of them today but don't ever meet them or know what they look like.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's to working 4 days in a row, sleeping behind server racks, bathing in bathroom sinks, and all those bags of potato chips and caffeinated soft drinks!

</comment><comment><USER12> I thanked the sysadmin crew at the office yesterday and took today off. :) Did the full-bore admin for 10 years before I got burned out and shifted to development. Still am part of the informal team that assist with various scripting, monitoring, etc... Work wants another DBA, so I may have to buy some more caffeine and lube to gain the bigger check.

</comment><comment><USER7> For the sense of duty that keeps all of it,ON. <http://xkcd.com/705/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey sysadmins, stay awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Happy Sysadmin Day.

p.s.: stop reading our mail :)</comment>


What Insiders Say About Yahoo's Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchtrack.co/guide/482/what-insiders-say-about-yahoo%27s-problems <comment><USER2> As someone who used to work at aol, it was all similar problems there. Facebook was based on Aim and Aim away messages. Aol didn't give a shit about Aim internally and just let it die. Aol also invented a lot of devops-y tools years before stuff like chef was released, then didn't open source any of them and slowly laid off all the teams working on them. They spent years in this weird gray area where nobody knew how to use their own tools any more, but there wasn't any real buy in or understanding of modern development practices (Agile? What's that?) so there wasn't any buy in for AWS/chef/Jenkins/etc, either. Just years and years of wasted time.

<comment><USER3> > Aol also invented a lot of devops-y tools years before stuff like chef was > released [...]

You mean before cfengine that started in 1993?

> [...] then didn't open source any of them and slowly laid off all the teams > working on them.

Back then it was not a common practice for companies to publish their tools as open source. It's a very recent development. It cannot be held too much against AOL that they didn't.

> [...] there wasn't any real buy in or understanding of modern development > practices (Agile? What's that?)

Again, time doesn't match. Agile manifesto was written in 2001.

Your opinions would have much more substance if the timing of the events was right.

<comment><USER2> You are aware that aol continues to exist, right? They had 15 years to implement agile. Some groups did. It wasn't widespread though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seing as this article is only about the length of a mid-sized Medium post, I see no reason for the annoying interface. Is this a modern version of using slides to increase clicks?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the founders of the site. Thanks for explicitly mentioning this.

We're testing a new format which helps people learn easily about a new topic. The idea is to break down information around a topic into bite-sized, slide- like chapters making it less overwhelming and more effective compared to a lot of information dumped in a single page. We're working to make this more interactive in future, from a learner's point of view.

Albeit we're still getting more feedback on it - yours being one of them. If you have any ideas related to improving navigation, i'd be happy to learn more.

Also, it'n not intended to get more clicks nor it generates anymore page views than 1 per user visit (no matter how much you go back and fourth within a single guide).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not a fan of the way the article/site is done. Why did it require that I enable JavaScript to load the text/navigation? Why was it spread across four pages instead of one?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the founders of the site. We're testing a different format which helps people learn easily about a new topic. The idea is to break down information around a topic into bite-sized, slide-like chapters making it less overwhelming and more effective compared to a lot of information dumped in a single page. We're working to make this more interactive in future, from a learner's point of view.

Enabling JS makes sure the slides work.

If you have any ideas related to navigation, i'd be happy to learn more.

<comment><USER5> The content for this particular article would work fine as a single page. The sections are small and bite-sized with clear headings and separations.

It's a bit discombobulating to paginate and scroll. The slide approach would work better if the contents were limited to a single page without vertical scroll (IMO). Feels a bit like a "mixed metaphor" in terms of design patterns.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, makes sense. We're indeed trying to find ways so authors could keep the contents of a single slide contained within the users view. Hope we get to a design sweet spot soon.

Thanks so much!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers accuse Xiaomi browsers of collecting data, even in Incognito mode - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-mi-web-browser-pro-mint-collecting-browsing-data-incognito-mode/ <comment><USER2> front page discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035266)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nearly all consumer-grade home security cameras sold today on Amazon are just rebranded Xiaomi.

This is part of a major initiative out of Beijing called the "Xiaomi Ecological Toolchain".

Wyze, Yi, Kami, and IMOU are all part of this group. The products, at least the physical cameras, are quite well made. The software though has security and data collection issues much like what is mentioned in this article.

However the main issue is this appears to be a somewhat significant anti-trust violation. It will depend though ultimately on how much coordination is going on between the companies.

<comment><USER4> Must be some variation in packaging/connectors/cabling. My buddy has bought a dozen different cameras, and the best of them need overhauling with better seals, completely reworked cable holes, and in some cases, gratuitous holes in the case plugged! He mounts them outdoors and they fail in days if he doesn't do something. Hasn't found an outdoor camera that performs as advertised, not one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The data that Xiaomi was sending was admittedly "encrypted", but it was > encoded in base64, which can easily be decoded.

Base64 isn't encryption. It's encoding. Not the same thing. In truth then, the data was _not_ encrypted, it was sent in the clear (or at least with no additional encryption layered over the web protocol), having been compressed with gzip and then encoded using base 64.

Not sure it matters though. Doesn't seem clear whether it was sent over HTTPS, which would count as encryption, but doesn't much ameliorate the privacy concerns. That Xiaomi appears to be straight-up lying about it is all the more damning.</comment>


Tesla must sell 70K Model 3s to reach profitability in Q3 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4177769-tesla-must-generate-1_3b-automotive-gross-profit-sell-approximately-70k-model-3s-reach <comment><USER2> That's a bit under 5,500 per week, in line with Elon's recently publicized goal: "By having a Model 3 subsystem burst-build requirement of 6k by the end of June, we will lay the groundwork for achieving a steady 6k/week across the whole Model 3 system a few months later."

<comment><USER3> They are going to 2x-3x production in a month? Or is a "burst-build requirement" just a reference to capability?

<comment><USER4> It sounds like he's talking about the max they can build vs what they can sustain.

In this graph:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla- tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

In April they managed to build 2,600 cars in one week, and stayed above 2,000 for 4 weeks in a row.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can monitor the number on Bloomberg:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla- tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Has everyone at Tesla watched the classic car factory film?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_\(film\))

<comment><USER7> Have they seen _Tucker?_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker:_The_Man_and_His_Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker:_The_Man_and_His_Dream)</comment></comment>


Your IT Company's Biggest Enemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/02/your_it_companys_biggest_enemy.html

<comment><USER2> It's not difficult to avoid the 'HR gateway' problem - just have HR concentrate on payroll, legal compliance issues, visas etc. & not interview or filter resumes. Interviewer should be the prospective recruit's direct manager, &/or someone who has/is or can do the job in question (wherever possible) and a seperate interview by someone else to confirm the first opinion. Is that rare? I've never hired any other way.

</comment><comment><USER3> _3\. I only computed two years of a university degree in computer science._

I suggest you get some more hardware, perhaps you can compute the remaining two a little quicker.

<comment><USER4> Comma splice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "... is the HR department."

Among the many reasons that I avoid corporate IT. Some of the smell tests are nattering on and on about responsibilities like attending meetings, preparing reports. It's like telling a doctor to scrub before surgery.

<comment><USER6> yep, a key reason I avoid BigCorp as well. But your comparison may be off: I have read recently (I think from HN) that forcing doctors and nurses to scrub before surgery reduces disease. I know, we all like to think the docs will do this with no oversight, but apparently not.

<comment><USER7> Indeed they don't, and this _was_ featured on YC:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760477>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of that YC funded recruiting company (forgot the name--help!) that closed up shop and had their postmortem featured on HN recently. The conclusion was that HR departments aren't a profit center, so there's no motivation to innovate.

Maybe there should be a RFS for a better way to measure HR performance; that way, at least the pointy-haired bosses could be yelled at by their pointy- haired bosses when they score below industry average, or worse than last year.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations for ML training 2h a week - <AUTHOR> The company where I work has allowed me to pick up training up to 2h a week on a subject I like. I would like to pick up AI, probably more the ML part and I'm wondering what would be the best way to make the most of my time.
Just researching on myself is not out of the question, but something a bit more structured would be better. Still, 2h a week might be a bit too little to spend following a proper AI class online.
Also, I'm not new to the subject, but I haven't really done much in it in over 10 years. Therefore, a normal introductory course might be somewhat useless in some points but required in other points. As such, something that I can choose the pace would be the most appropriate.
Any recommendations would be very much appreciated... <comment><USER2> Just a thought: is it practical to match the company time with some of your own time? e.g. two hours of company time plus two hours of your own time. The degree to which that sounds like a good idea might be a useful way of gaging your own interest in a particular method or course of study...material that is engaging enough to pursue outside of work is likely to be a good choice _for you._

A second thought is to frame the project in calendar time. Two hours a week is a lot of hours over a year.

A third thought is to frame the project in workday time. A half hour a day, every work day is a steady discipline.

Finally, I'm biased toward beginning at the beginning because I often find that skipping the early basics based on what I know means I miss the author telling me which basics the author thinks are important (and since they're the expert, perhaps I ought to value their judgment a bit more than my own in that regard).

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am taking Machine Learning on coursera by Andrew Ag. Initially I was intimidated by the idea of ML as I had no prior programming experience. I started learning data science stuff less than 6 months ago. I started to feel motivated and confident about ML by taking this course. I highly recommend it.

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll look that up. However, how much time does that takes you (weekly)?

<comment><USER4> It's self-paced, so it's kinda up to you. There are "deadlines" to help keep you on track, but they're optional. To pass, you just have to pass all the graded assignments by the end date. But if you're getting close to the end and are behind, you can always shift your enrollment to the following session - but you keep all your progress and everything. It's pretty cool in that regard. Very low pressure.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool. Can you tell me how much time you spend on it per week in average? Just so I get a general idea...

<comment><USER4> It's been a while since I took it, but I think I spent an hour or two a week watching the videos and reading notes and whatever, and then maybe another 3-5 hours on the programming assignment. It was probably less than that on the earlier programming assignments, and more on the later ones as things got more complicated later on. And I might have spent more time on the videos on certain sections, because of re-watching sections that weren't intuitively clear to me right away. In particular, some of the math'ier stuff where he explained the stuff about using partial derivatives to calculate the error gradients for neural networks... that stuff I had to put more work into since my math background isn't real strong (I never took multi-variable calculus).

All of that said, you can get through the class and learn and understand the material at the level he teaches it, even without completely understanding partial derivatives (a point he makes in the lecture). But having a strong calculus background certainly wouldn't hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it isn't too introductory, I'd say take the Andrew Ng course on Machine Learning on Coursera. If that's too introductory, try the Geoffrey Hinton course on Neural Networks on Coursera, or the Google / Tensorflow course on Deep Learning on, er, I think it's EdX.</comment>


One Secret of Success: If You Quit, You Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialhack.com/2008/01/01/10186_lessons-from-the-marathon-monks-how-to-achieve-the-impossible.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Being expected to kill yourself if you decide to quit is a pretty good motivating factor to keep going even at the lowest points."

I would think so.</comment>