FCC declares that USA's wireless competition problem has been solved - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/fcc-declares-that-usas-wireless-competition-problem-has-been-solved/ <comment><USER2> For some background here, ATT claimed for decades that there was no reasonable way they could provide cheap local phone calls unless they were given a monopoly whereby they could charge super expensive prices for long distance calls to make up the difference.

The founder of MCI (the M stood for Microwave) realized that by using Microwave Relay Towers, he could earn enough profit to pay for a set of towers between Chicago and St. Louis WITHIN EIGHT HOURS assuming a start time of 7:00 am.

That realization, and his outmaneuvering of the FCC, was the beginning of the end for ATT. Ironically today MCI is owned by Verizon.

If you're interested in learning more check out this book: The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age [https://www.amazon.com/dp/006224275X/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/006224275X/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Counting subscribers, T-Mobile + Sprint is still in third place behind Verizon and AT&T.

If the landscape wasn't competitive in 2011, then why were there no efforts by the administration to break up the duopoly?

It seems if you want competition, and you don't want a real third competitor, the answer is breaking up the big two. Why wasn't that a thing? It's almost like the duopoly was concern trolling about competition to block competition to their duopoly.</comment>


Ask HN: What language do you think has the best FFI? - <AUTHOR>

Just kind of curious about what people think about different FFI implementations. <comment><USER2> Clojure--it makes writing Java code easier than Java itself does (one example: Clojure altomagically casts arguments to the needed type).

Please visit my site: <http://www.GettingClojure.com></comment>


Building the Google Stadia for Video Editing - <AUTHOR> https://flixier.com/blog/what-does-the-Google-Stadia-for-video-editing-looks-like <comment><AUTHOR> It involves extreme video exporting speeds, real-time collaboration, easy access to plenty of storage and much more.</comment>


How to help someone use a computer - <AUTHOR> http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html

<comment><USER2> I found I got a lot "better" at communicating just by toning down my geekiness. Not by changing in the content of what I say, just by changing my bedside manner. Instead of saying, "and this part is neat," I joke about how much the computer sucks and how annoying it is. When I do that, people trust that what I'm telling them is actually helpful and relevant to their usage of the machine. Before, they would ignore most of what I said. They tried to filter out what they assumed was gratuitous geekery so they could get to the "payoff" where I told them how to do what they need to do. Since I wasn't actually wasting their time with extraneous information, they missed most of what they needed to know to understand what I was telling them. It's really hard to talk to people when they assume the proper way to understand you is to hear about 10% of what you're saying.

When I pretend to hate computers as much as they do, they actually listen to everything I say, and voila, they understand a whole hell of a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I knew I'd seen it, and suspected I found it through HN. Here it is with its discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=400048>

No harm in seeing this again, but the (rather small) discussion has some interesting points and counter-points.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I probably should have done a search first. ;-) But the post about social problems in computing reminded me of this article.

<comment><USER3> No, I agree that it's worth seeing again. Helping technical people to communicate with non-technical people is gold. How many people produce what they think is a fantastic web site only to find that "normals" can't use it?! How thick can they be?! It's obvious! Can't they read?

We should be reminded of these lessons daily (although I wouldn't recommend resubmitting daily 8-)

I've put this in my "Great Articles" site that I'm trying to get time to work on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this to be the most useful point:

 _Don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction._

While there are certainly times when something needs to be accomplished in a hurry (in which cases I interject, "mind if I drive for a minute?"), 95% of the time I defer to letting the user explore and find the appropriate solution.

More often then not they ask me to take over and "fix it". I refuse politely and encourage them to try for themselves, along with some guidance from me. I am happy to walk them through, but I've found that long term, just fixing the problem without teaching leads to a lifetime of being on call any time a user encounters even the slightest error.

</comment><comment><USER5> A few rebuttals, from someone who taught basic computer usage at a community center for a few years:

> If it's not obvious to them, it's not obvious.

At first, yes. If, however, I explain it, I demonstrate it, I guide them to do it five times in various contexts, and they do it themselves for me in five more contexts—and then they call me back over because they _still_ "can't" do it—then is _is_ their fault, and they're just being helpless because they want attention.

> You are the voice of authority. Your words can wound.

I _wish_ I was the voice of authority. 90% of the "guidance" I gave people was of the "X does not work like Y, you need to learn a new skill to do X" variety, with them not listening and going ahead and treating X like a Y, and then asking me why it doesn't work.

> Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to > help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their > own. So it's okay if they take notes.

Oh, I wish they saw it that way. They want "an answer, not a lecture." They want me to be a magic elf who comes, saves them from their mess, and lets them live in ignorant bliss, _even though they came to be taught computing skills_. It's quixotic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some current context:

<http://sites.google.com/site/philipagre/>

<comment><AUTHOR> The police found him and claim he's "in good health and self-sufficient" though his friends and colleagues are still looking for him. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/01/missing_i...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/01/missing_internet_pioneer_phil.html)

He's written a lot of good stuff, though.</comment></comment>


My startups's new service for parents - A Story Before Bed - <AUTHOR> http://www.astorybeforebed.com <comment><USER3> I think some people are missing the point: this is a service designed for parents/grandparents/etc. that for one reason or another are unable to be physically PRESENT for bedtime. Everyone knows being there with a book in hand is far superior.

Use your brains, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. You got it exactly. And for the folks who were confused by the opening sentence on our site, we've updated it in an attempt to reduce confusion. Check it out now and see what you think. :) (clear your cache when you reload the page to make sure you get the latest ;)

<comment><USER4> Now that that's out of the way, some comments about your site itself (these are unordered, but I hope they're useful):

(disclaimer: I don't have kids, so mentions of my kids are hypothetical)

\- The DESIGN! It's beautiful, charming, and makes me want to snuggle a teddy bear. Your load screen ("loading book") has such lovely colors that I giggled - and THAT is rare praise.

\- I like the bookshelf idea, with some exceptions: the popups that occur when hovering over a book are a bit jarring, because they don't fit in with your otherwise beautiful design. I'd like them to gently fade in, with pastel background, rather than whacking me with great blotches of white.

\- On the popups, you have prices. I HATE the overlined "regular price whatever", it takes the site from feeling like an exclusive storyland boutique to Walmart. Get rid of that. In fact, don't put the prices on popups - <USER2> should just be a short blurb about the book. Make one price, and stick it somewhere on the page.

\- Which brings me to the next problem - it's unclear what the price is for. Is it for one video? Just for reading the book? For recording as many videos as I want of that book? Make it clear what the prices actually refer to.

\- I personally like the bookshelf, but I understand why others disagree. My only problem is that when sorting by ages, I'm required to scroll way down before I find 3-6 or 6-9, etc. You should find a way to make those "tabs" or something on the top (it's OK to violate the physics of your metaphor, as long as its pretty). The search box is also too white - like the designer was lazy to finish.

\- The book reader is lovely. The books are crisp and beautiful, in full elegant color. What I'd love is a fullscreen version with blacked-out background, the way I can watch full-screen YouTube videos. BUT: How can I get rid of the annoying "record the book" panel? I don't want to record it right now, I want to READ it with my kids, because these books look lovely and I don't have them all.

\- Which brings me to the only really substantive point of this post. I think the true gem of your site isn't really the whole "video" aspect - it's delivering a truly beautiful user experience of lovely children's books which parents can read to their kids, _together_ , even if they don't own the book. My MacBook has a gorgeous, luminous screen, and I'd love to sit and read these with someone. The "recording videos" bit feels tacked on the end.

\- So I guess my only real recommendation is to split the site, or drop the videos entirely. But IMHO your clear route to success is to deliver a gorgeous, lush user experience of excellent children's books to parents who want to read to their kids, but don't know what to read, aren't near a library, don't have time to buy books, don't want to buy books that'll only get read once, etc.

\- If you want to make a _second_ site that allows one to record readings of these books and send them around, that might work too. Another option is to make children's books the first in a large number of online books that deliver a really excellent online book-reading experience, with bookmarks, notes, crisper-than-crisp fonts, and a soul-soothing design. I haven't really seen a books site that looks like this, with such a nice reader - if I could subscribe a-la Netflix to ebooks on your web-based reader, and you kept track of my bookmarks, made me recommendations, and let me date girls who like the books I like, I'd definitely pay you every month.

Those are some rambling thoughts, but I hope you find something useful in there.

<comment><USER5> I think this is some of the best advice I've read on this site.

You really have an awesome implementation and a real market. I agree with caffeine in that you might want to simply sell access to the children's books for parents to read with their kids, on their laptop or phone, in full screen.

The presentation of this is infinitely better than any ebook reader or a Kindle and would be worth a lot of money to a lot of parents. I think some sort of subscription model would work wonders here.

Also "let me date girls who like the books I like" -- haha I missed this the first time I read your post. Careful Chris Hansen doesn't mess around.

<comment><USER4> _Careful Chris Hansen doesn't mess around_

Yikes :( I guess the post wasn't clear enough, I'll edit it. I meant that I eventually want "Kindle in my web browser", with regular (not just children's) books .. followed up with some kind of social reading that doesn't suck (which has not been invented yet). I like their book reader and attention to detail, I think they could make a really luxury "coffee house" feel to a book-reading website.

That said - maybe you're right, and there's room for social features on the kids' level. Organizing play dates between our kids if they both liked such & such a book?

(edit: apparently I can't edit my previous post. weird.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I were a high priced PR firm I'd charge you $30,000 for the following piece of advice: if you give this away to folks with a .mil email address you will be featured in national publications for it.

edited to add: And since you apparently already thought of that, here's another one:

Currently, you sell books for $7. You should probably also offer some deal like 3 for $20 or 5 for $30, because this will _greatly_ increase your average customer value. (Your median number of books purchased is going to be 1, otherwise. Trust me -- nature of the beast.) After you've convinced folks $7 is the price for a book (too low, but we'll roll with it), and they've committed to spending $7, it is very easy to convince them to spend another $13 to save a buck.

Another reason you'll like this: cash flow. You see, many people are going to buy 3/5 book credits and record 1 (or 0) books. This means that you're sitting on their money in the interim. Depending on your local accounting rules, that can probably be booked as revenue (and can almost certainly be spent on expenses) today. Also, since they haven't picked a book off the shelf yet, I'm guessing you don't owe any royalties on the $13 which pays for books that haven't been recorded. (Check your contracts/legal advisors.)

(Some folks might be discomfitted by this advice since you may think the business is getting money for nothing. That isn't correct: they're just getting money _in advance of_ doing something of value for the customer, _in consideration of_ giving the customer a break on the ultimate price.

This is similar to how a shareware business sells you a license today which includes technical support six months down the road, rather than selling you a cheaper license today and charging a high per-incident fee later. We don't think the shareware vendor is being dishonest because the support hasn't been delivered yet, or because it may never be delivered.)

<comment><USER7> Looks like they have something like that actually - <http://www.astorybeforebed.com/milpromo> \- or they just added it REALLY quickly to the site. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice website.

For my kid, the actual story is not such an important part of the bed time routine. The fact that I am in her room, comforting her while she winds down and spending some time before she sleeps, is key. Swapping me with an iPhone will probably not help.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I am a pretty creative person and have been making up stories to tell my daughter since she was old enough to understand what I was saying. I found that when I tried harder to make the stories cohesive and storybook-like she just got bored and demanded a different plot line or character. She seems to enjoy them much more when I throw in random things like race cars made out of fruit or old men jumping over houses to get to their breakfast. Little kids are funny sometimes.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I've been telling a series of stories to my daughter for 5+ years now....there are only so many funny situations you can make up with an elephant, 4 squirrls, 1 monkey, a klutsy rabbit, a spider, an ant, 2 cats, a dragon ...

Here you go: <http://thepeopleoftheforest.blogspot.com>

Man, sometimes I don't have it in me to do anything new on that.

<comment><USER9> I totally hear you there. Herbert the Friendly Dragon can only get into so many sticky situations that require the children of the village to help him out before I start repeating myself :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is VERY well designed. Many congrats on that regard.

Rather than critiquing it for not being a suitable replacement for parental story time, why not someone suggest it be used in libraries? Let the librarian record the stories and give the children access to them on the library's computers. For children who can't read, they still get a fun experience and it's more intimate than some tape recording.

This also has educational implications, in teaching children to read and maybe using the interface as a 2-way communication device for some sort of tutoring service where children learn to read by practicing with a teacher listening and watching them as they try. What about allowing them to do have real-time drawing capabilities, like you see on NFL games, circling words the child makes a mistake on, or underlining a sentence the teacher wants to emphasize for whatever purpose.

These iterations of this service are what make it a beautiful thing. I don't reckon it would be too difficult to add either of them as well. Would also provide it a more viable business model.

</comment><comment><USER12> The intro text "Chose a story... whenever they want." threw me. How do they play back a story? Then there's some text about recording a book. Huh? The picture of some goofy old guy on what looks like a stamp didn't help. I click a book and that doesn't clear up the confusion either.

Of course with a little effort I was able to figure out what this does, but I'd change the wording to "Record yourself reading a book of your choice to...." so it's immediately apparent.

<comment><USER13> And I'd add: make the text "choose a story..." be the same link that the images above link to. Links are cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks nice. Here's the part I don't get: I read to my 4 year old son. I do so while he is in bed as part of the purpose is to settle him down. I set the lights low, just enough so I can read and he can see the book. I don't see how a web site allows me to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> @jhancock you're right. we're working on an iphone reader so the site is more "bed-friendly". :)

<comment><USER15> Why an iPhone? I see this as most useful for an absent parent (e.g. on a business trip / separated). What then is the chance of their being an unused iPhone in the house?

Why not a standard PC built into a teddy-bear, simplified and locked down for just this application? Sell it as a $500 dedicated device to the business (wo)man who's away from their kids on a business trip.

[EDIT] p.s. - wouldn't the iPhone screen make the text too small for the child to read along with the parent? Is reading along an important part of the experience?

<comment><USER16> Think a little longer term. The iPod touch has a great chance to displace the Gameboy as the portable gameplayer of choice. You get way more processing power per dollar (and not much more expensive), a massive catalog of games, and services like this demonstrate other uses nicely. I would do the iPod touch version stat!

<comment><USER15> It's not a matter of 'longer term', it's a matter of suitability of the HW for the task at hand. The iPod touch / iPhone has small screen, which would not allow the book to be displayed in full glory along side the video, so no reading along for the child :(. Plus it doesn't support Flash, it would need to be a native app, hence taxable by Apple.

I'm not saying iPhone wont work at all, I'm saying there's probably an _additional_ opportunity (maybe better) for a bigger device, designed specifically for the task, and sold at a healthy margin (people who go on lots of business trips normally have above average income).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to ask whether or not you actually have kids?

There is a significant difference in the development of a child's verbal ability when they are read to by a caretaker vs. watching the exact same thing on a screen. One is an active process, one is passive, and it engages them differently.

You can even tell by listening to a child talk whether they watch a lot of TV or not. There is a specific accent that they pick up, which basically amounts to a lack of enunciation.

Now, all that being said. I think your idea would make money. I thank many parents would love it.

But I think if you are not prepared to be abhorred by child development professionals, you should think again.

<comment><USER18> Do you really think anyone who cares enough to want to use a service like this simultaneously doesn't care enough to want to be there in person if they could? If the options are nothing/regular tv or this, which is better?

<comment><USER17> I think you are missing my main point.

If the site owners have kids, they will understand all the vast differences in parental philosophy and choices. And they can predict some of the positive and negative reactions to their product.

I personally have a negative reaction. I also clearly stated that I thought others would have a positive reaction.

The point isn't the specific reaction of any given parent. It is the full spectrum of reactions that the general population will have. If they have children, this is a topic they probably already know. If they don't have children, they could be in for surprises.

So it is a valid question -- "Do you know your market?"

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, three children. Ages 3, 6, and 8. We live in Seattle. Their grandparents live in Massachusetts and Maryland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Before reading the HN comments, I thought this was an online bookstore targeted at bedtime reading for kids.

Letting users flip through a book before deciding to buy it is a great idea. It's the biggest thing that I'm missing when shopping at an online store.

Perhaps you should also offer the option to buy the book from amazon =) Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER20> As a soldier, I would have _loved_ this while I was deployed. This looks to be a great service - I'm spreading the word to all my Army buddies. Such a great idea!

</comment><comment><USER21> How do you plan to market it? How do you plan to reach this niche you are talking about: Split families. Might be helpful for other folks who want to get the word out to a niche.

</comment><comment><USER22> my wife just cried when i explained the business idea. it's a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a father of four (and a web developer), who has read to his children every night for... 16 years now... (OMG), I have to ask:

"Why would I want this?"

My kids never really liked those books that came with a tape, and this just seems like a more convenient way of producing something they didn't want anyway. I'm not trying to be mean, you folks have clearly worked hard on this, and I wish you every success, but honestly I don't see the appeal. Bedtime is so much more then just a story.

IMHO, the best start-up service for parents (with regards to bedtime) is your local library.

<comment><USER24> As a parent who travels frequently, I think this is a great idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is great concept! I think you have a winner as far as user desirability goes! Incredible artwork and the layout and workings of the site are top notch.

As far as profiting from this site in addition to trying to get grandparents to pay for the online reading of the books it seems like a natural to allow parents to access the books in total to read to the kids themselves for a small 6 month membership fee. Then you expand your target market and your potential income.

This is an incredibly well done site. If this were my site, initially I would not try to market it myself, instead I would focus on licensing its use to other sites that already have a large presence in the kids/parents market such as Disney and Barbie. I would focus on selling the larger company as to your sites potential of being a marketing feature for the larger site and I would seek to bill the licensee company for the traffic vs. billing the grandparent or parent directly. You would simply become a feature on their existing site.

What a great holiday gift for a child this site would be. I would also come up with a marketing angle to sell access to the site's books in full in large bookstores like Borders and in Wal-Mart alongside the physical books. I would use some sort of physical packaging that could go in the bookracks alongside the hardcopy books with a little teddy bear attached to grab the buyers attention.

Marketed correctly—I believe you have a winner!

</comment><comment><USER26> Holy shit, the design.

<comment><USER27> I agree with markbao above, but I thought you might like some more constructive feedback than "holy shit".

People aren't afraid of scrolling, so you can use your vertical space better. You could put the description/call to action closer to the top/center of the page and make them bigger. I would slide the thumbnail images for the books below that. As long as people can tell that there are books there, they'll scroll through them to find one that works.

The set of 50 books on the bookshelf is an overwhelming wall of visual noise. You may want to curate/redact to get fewer books up there (those aren't all what I would consider great kids literature), get rid of the bookshelf metaphor (or at least tone down the contrast). Also, as all of the books are different aspect ratios, there's a lot of extra visual noise in what could otherwise be a tidy grid. Consider cropping them all to square.

Are any of the books available for free? It might help to have one or two free books to get people interested in the concept and to get more feedback/usage data from real humans.

Don't get disheartened. It's a cool concept. I started doing a similar thing for my kid with a digital camera, a mic, and real books but my kid learned how to read before I finished the audio editing.

<comment><USER26> Certainly. My comment was an initial exclamation.

I think it works pretty well with the copy on the right side. The bookshelf makes a bit more of an impact with how much space it takes on the page. Furthermore, if you move the text copy to the top, the bookshelf will extend to the entire page's width, which may just create even more noise on the page when skimming.

Though there's only one way to be sure: A/B test it!

<comment><USER28> _Though there's only one way to be sure: A/B test it!_

I couldn't agree more, and yet so many ignore this step. Plenty of "great" designs, clearly better than "meh" designs even to the practiced eye, get clobbered by "meh" in A/B testing. Find good metrics, and then trust the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow.

This is one of the best startup ideas I've seen all year.

You guys are going to rock!

The market is even bigger than you think. I hate to be morbid, but imagine: grandpa gets sick with cancer and has one year to live. Quickly he spends a couple hundred bucks and leaves all the grandkids with special stories they can cherish the rest of their lives.

I think there is real generational network potential here as well, what with families spread out all over the place.

Now whatever you do, don't screw it up!

</comment><comment><USER30> I prefer the model where my kids can get stories read to them by anyone.

Also I think you could have a hit with moms if you do an autoplay feature. Moms need 30 mins of time to get something done. Moms dont like it when their kids watch TV. Your app should allow a Mom to click play and then deliver 30 mins of books to the child, uninterrupted. IMHO if it's a high quality experience moms would pay for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. :)

<comment><USER31> I was thinking Jackanory style "programs" where authors read their own book or a voice actor reads. Indeed you could probably by rights for audio from the BBC, etc., or from Barefoot Books, say, and match up with the book. Very easy to establish a large catalogue of books then.

Another extension might be to offer a copy of the book with an audio-CD/mp3 of the person reading bundled with it.

I think there are so many variations possible (particularly in education sector) and that this idea will be in demand from children's publishers (licensing?) that you should do well with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hi Hillel,

To concur with the masses... great site! I like the idea and I think its more intuitive than some of the comments would suggest.

This reminds me of these interactive CD-ROM books that my little sister used growing up (shes 18 now). One thing that I liked at the time was how interactive the books were. Users could click on background imagery to engage little animations, etc.

Do you have any plans to make the site more interactive? Something very simple like highlighting the word as its being read (think of Karaoke) would add a lot of educational value and help, at least marginally with reading.

I see this service as not only replacing the parent when they're away, but also as a standalone educational platform for kids. You can even incorporate ages to scale the complexity of the interaction. So for younger kids, clicking a carton bunny may just show a bubble with the word "rabbit" while older kids get something more advanced.

Are armed services the target group? Have you seen interest from users who aren't away on such extended leaves?

I wonder how useful this service is for parents who only make 1-3 day business trips.

</comment><comment><USER33> The site is absolutely beautiful. Great design.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great service, I checked the demo and it worked well.

My question is this, what is your intended market? The only reason I see myself using this is if I where to die soon, and wanted kids to still have stories read by me, but I don't know if I would do it then. Maybe if I commuted a lot.

I'd be very interested to understand who the user is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We think this is appropriate for parents who are on business trips, grandparents who live far away, split family situations, parents stationed in the military, etc. We also have gotten reports that people are interested in using it to record kids reading books to show off to their remote grandparents.

<comment><USER4> Your site would be 10x more useful if you pasted the above comment directly onto the home page.

<comment><USER35> +1 on this comment -- I'm the market for this site (kids, 3 and 5 yrs) didn't understand how the site helped me on first view. That paragraph would've made a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Might I suggest a feature?

Apparently, a common problem with before-bed-stories if you have more than one children is who gets to sit in the lap during the story. Normally, it is alternating every night, however, you have to remember carefully who got to sit in the lap the previous night, as children aren't quite the most reliable source of information in this case (they tell you anything to sit in the lap) and if you make a mistake, the one who didn't get to sit in the lap will be offended for weeks. This is very hard to keep in mind. So you could add a "who got to sit in the lap" history to help parents. I'm sure many of them would really appreciate it!

</comment><comment><USER37> I made a site kind of like this... except for songs instead of stories:

<http://singingmemories.com/>

Hooked up seesmic so anyone could record themselves singing, since it's hard to learn songs just by reading them.

Hope you guys like it!

</comment><comment><USER38> I really like the awesome bookshelf interface. It is really a brilliant design. I think that your service would make a nice bookstore for children, but I wonder how many parents will actually use it for storytime.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is interesting to see how popular this idea is for a couple reasons:

1\. Focus on Design - The software is solid, but the aesthetics are what seem to make the service. It just looks like a professional project even though it is a three person team, working on it part time based on all the other projects they have on their site.

2\. Kid as Customer - With so many social media/real time projects in the works it is energizing to see bits and pixels used in the service of different customer groups.

How many people commenting have invested a lot in the design of their site or are targeting an atypical customer base?

</comment><comment><USER39> I had the same reaction as others here.

Liked the design a lot, browsed through the books, opened one and got confused about what "recording" was supposed to mean. Flipped through the end of the book, and went to the FAQ, got even more confused by the webcam requirement. Then went back to the homepage and noticed the video. Played it and finally understood what the site is for.

Your "welcome" message should be changed to clearly state that you here to do a video recording of a bedtime story for a child when you're away.

<comment><USER39> I also didn't find any information on pricing.

There's a note on "you can record and preview before paying", but I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of recording and figure out at the last minute that the thing is way beyond my budget.

[edit: found the pricing on rollover, it's slow enough that it didn't show up the first time I clicked around. I would include it also on the book page]

<comment><USER39> beside that, I think it's a great idea. I read to my 4 year old son every night at bedtime, and I will definitely give astorybeforebed.com a try next time I'm on a business trip.

<comment><USER40> @cedsav - we're glad to hear you'll give it a spin. Good feedback on pricing. If you hover over the books on the bookshelf, you get more info on the book. Currently, all books recordings are $6.99 and you can watch it/share it as many times as you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome design, but I don't like the concept :/ You can't substitute real quality time spent with kids, and that's what this seems to do. Maybe I'm missing the concept, but I don't see why parents or children would rather watch a video than have proper 1on1 storytime.

I guess I don't see what problem it solves, and IMHO it could promote lazy parenting. But I'm not convinced a kid would really be willing to use it to listen to a story. I don't think it'd be effective putting kids to bed.

<comment><AUTHOR> @axod: You're right. This isn't a replacement for 1:1 storytime. But sometimes that's not possible. Like when a parent is on a business trip, or stationed abroad in the military, or with remote grandparents, or in a split family situation.

<comment><USER41> FWIW, I was in a split family situation with my son since he was 18months. He's 10 now. I really don't think this would have been a good idea. I did think about getting a webcam setup at the time, but you need some boundaries, and things worked out great in the end. Phone is good, and obviously making every effort when you are together, etc. Having too much webcam/phone/etc can just make everyone miss everyone even more, and make things worse rather than better.

I'm sorry to be 'down' on the service, but it just makes me kinda sad :/

I guess for parents who work far away, or abroad, it could be useful. Or it could just make the kids miss them more...

Would a kid rather watch a video of an absent parent telling a story, or have the parent who is present read them a story in person? I'd expect usually the 2nd option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very well done.

Is there any 'bed friendly' hardware that could run this? Ie a cuddly toy with an Internet connected PC built in? And by 'bed friendly' I mean not just safe to have in bed, but also one that isn't so frustrating to use that it causes a mini-stress just before bedtime. I'm guessing a parent who is away from their kids on a business trip might well shell out $500 guilt dollars for such a device.

<comment><USER16> This is kind of like the service that made its debut at the TechCrunch 50. <http://toybots.com/> The big difference is that this one is available now:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Two things I noticed while watching someone use this:

When reaching the end of the story, the person wanted to turn back one page, but this is impossible - you can only go back to the start.

The hover popup never activated - the person would click on the story, and never see the popup. I would have a click bring up the popup, and make a button from the popup that goes to the record page.

</comment><comment><USER43> a company at TC50 launched a similar service. <http://storysomething.com/> [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-story-something- ma...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-story-something-maximizes- story-time-for-time-starved-parents/)

<comment><USER44> The massive signup overlay on storysomething.com is pretty sucky though -- the OP's site wins hands down on usability and delayed registration.

I love sites that let me use functionality to play around and create, and then allow me to register when it comes to saving work or ordering. Wish more sites did this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It may already be a feature in the product, but I'd want the ability to export the story either to youtube and/or be able to download it to my disk.

I can see myself using it having my kids read a story as a saved memory. I also can imagine my mother in law going nuts over this thing because she lives so far away from us.

It's really a good idea. Awesome job

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. It's in the works. And thanks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Looks great, very professional. The only problem I'm seeing is (in Chrome/WinXP) some white letters on the top left hand corner. Debugging messages maybe? Something like "Mem 38.66MB/ ... count: 0" on top of the "Story before bed" logo.

This must be one of the few websites where the "starry sky" background image makes sense, BTW.

<comment><USER47> You must have a debug version of Flash installed. I'll probably turn that wacky display off for the next build. Or if you install regular Flash it will go away and the animation will be smoother, too. :)

<comment><USER46> Correct, the machine I was using had a debug version of Flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This would work much better as a desktop application. That way you could have the whole app fade out after a story is done and then shut the computer off 10min after a few stories have been read.

Also, if it were a desktop app, it would be much more like the book from that Neal Stephenson novel The Diamond Age ;)

<comment><USER49> No need. The browser page can do the fade to a dark page, and you can set your computer monitor to power off after so many minutes in the settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's never the "story" that's important. It's the various voices, the acting, the spending some quality time before the day is over that's more important, which can't be replaced by an iPhone obviously.

Nice service for something like a 16th birthday gift though... "remember the times..." something like that.

</comment><comment><USER51> Beautiful website. Nice implementation.

Using the Justin.tv API you could actually give an option to have the parent talk to his/her kid live as well.

Imagine a mom who just went on a business trip to Tokyo. Maybe she could tell the story to her kid live, while they and even flip the pages for the kid.

</comment><comment><USER52> Two minor bits of critisism:

\- The small version of the support_open image is hard to read

\- There are some weird errors in your css (and some that are easily fixed in your html). See <http://vldtr.com/?key=astorybeforebed>

</comment><comment><USER53> Very well done. At first, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a web site with some storybooks to read? Why not just use a real book!?" Then, I clicked the link and was presently surprised with this well thought out implementation.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is very impressive. I can understand people's first-thoughts of "the lazy parent", but I would have loved to have this when I was traveling a lot when my kids were younger.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a great idea! My kids have a set of grandparents in Korea, and they can't see each other more than once a year. I'm going to forward the site to them today.

</comment><comment><USER56> lovely interface. I'd love it if you could post us an update some way along the line mentioning how your experience of using a bookshelf UI has worked out.

There was another startup (totally forget who they were) that posted to HN some time ago with something vaguely similar (though not as nice looking). I think they were just providing an alternative UI to buying books on amazon though. I've always wondered what happened to them.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is awesome. One question: What was your initial process to get permission to use these (copyrighted) books?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much. As for the licensing, working with the rights holders is the only way I know how to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Great job! Very clean design and excellent interface. Did you custom build the page turning animations?

<comment><USER47> Thank you! Yes, we did. The book is a PaperVision3D model and we do a little mesh animation to make the pages curl nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This site also seems to be very compelling for traveling with kids. Great for Virgin America.

<comment><USER58> Yesn I agree. Great way for parents to tell stories to children on airplanes and other public places, where pre-recorded works better (I.e. Amtrack trains, DVD players even in cars for long road trips, although not public place). This way you don't disturb your fellow passengers and you can watch your own movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> this is excellent not least of all because it could replace most of the crap tv that kids are told to watch while parents do something else.

</comment><comment><USER60> Great idea, well-implemented. Ignore the naysayers.

</comment><comment><USER61> What a simple and well implemented service.

</comment><comment><USER62> checked it out really quickly and decided that I'll definitely try out your service for my son tonight.

</comment><comment><USER63> Excellent design, very cool.

</comment><comment><USER64> Does this use Flex, or straight up flash programming?

<comment><USER47> It uses Flex for UI layout in the book reader. The book itself is plain Flash using PaperVision3D. (The rest of the site is HTML.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So Cool!</comment>


Show HN: Guess the movie from the emojis - <AUTHOR> https://guessmoji.io/ <comment><USER2> Genius, I have the same app idea in my ideas list except I wanted to make it more competitive with a real-time round-based concept where players have limited time to guess.

Somehow this movie-title guessing is working especially well with emojis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

This idea is on my list for quite some time. It's simple and fun. I really don't know why I waited so long to build it.

I'm also planning to add some competitive features, like a leaderboard. But I liked your idea. A duel mode between two or more players sounds really fun!

And I agree it works really well with movies, but it's on the roadmap to expand to tv shows, games, books, bands, songs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have no idea what the first one is. And the skip button reloads the same page. Nice concept

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

The skip button should take you to another random emoji. And maybe it did, but it was the same random emoji as before. I should probably add some code to don't let this happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After I nailed U+1F680 U+2604 U+1F4A3 = Armageddon, I left feeling empowered.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the goal!

Do you want to try one of the hardest emojis? Take a look on this: [https://guessmoji.io/emojis/78/guesses/new](https://guessmoji.io/emojis/78/guesses/new)</comment></comment>


How Inventors Always Get Screwed - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/10/greg_kinnear_in.html;jsessionid=PC1LCT4NAMYFSQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN

<comment><USER2> Anecdotal evidence: I know an inventor that got screwed -> inventors always get screwed.

It does not hold water, there are plenty of inventors that did really well from their inventions, there are also quite a few that did not profit at all. On the whole it is as with any other creative job, if you're not good in both the business side and the creative side team up with somebody who is (it still exposes you to the risk that they'll take your money).

The Armstrong story is quite sad by the way, he committed suicide because he lost a patent fight he should have won.

</comment><comment><USER3> > his tale of a true genius struggling against those out to steal the fruits > of his brilliance.

"You cannot develop a reputation for somebody who gives up. You have to be known as a fighter for your rights. Otherwise, you'll never license anything...Even Thomas Edison had a tough time supporting and protecting his patents. He spent about $1.4 million [to defend his inventions], and this was around the turn of the century, when beer was a nickel." -Jerome Lemelson

Jerome Lemelson, who was arguably the most successful American inventor (in terms of money received, not brilliance - some of his 600 patents are questionable) in decades, was a patent-holder of many key patents relating to magnetic recording. And stuff like the flexible track used by Mattel's Matchbox cars.

He spent years in court suing the big players like Sony to pay him licensing fees. He ultimately prevailed in many cases and now his foundation helps support patent rights for inventors and helps bootstrap and reward promising inventors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson>

</comment><comment><USER4> This generalizes to a principle that all law students ought to learn in law school, or in their summer jobs during law school. A very typical form of new business partnership is the "brains-money" partnership, in which one partner provides the brilliant new business idea, and the other partner provides the capital. What is typically found in such partnerships is that the partner with the money controls the direction of the development of the partnership. That's not really terribly surprising to anyone who has ever formed a start-up.

</comment><comment><USER5> The windshield-wiper story has always bothered me. I'm sorry, call me a Communist or something, but nobody deserves $30 million for "inventing" an intermittent windshield wiper. Can you imagine what it would do to our cost of living, not to mention the progress of technology, if we had to reward "inventors" across all market segments by that standard?

To me, the Kearns case was just an early example of an obvious patent that would never have been granted by any examiner smart enough to fog a mirror.

<comment><USER4> A contrary point of view would be that if the incremental improvement in performance of a variable-speed wiper is worth one cent (or one dollar, or whatever) over the performance of a constant-speed wiper for each driver on the roadways of this country, it makes perfect economic sense for the pioneer who brings about that improvement to enjoy a license fee that car manufacturers pass on to each driver for the duration of a patent. Patents don't last forever, but they are intended to be lucrative enough to get someone out of the starting blocks to DO something about implementing a new improvement.

<comment><USER5> Here's one way to counter that argument: let's say you run a car manufacturer. You don't happen to know about the Kearns patent, but one day while driving home in an intermittent rainstorm, you find yourself wishing your wipers didn't have to run continuously. When you get to work the next day you stop by the engineering department and say "Hey, Joe, stick a 555 timer in that windshield relay circuit, would you?"

Five years and several million cars later, Kearns jumps out of the bushes and whacks you in the kneecap with a lawsuit. What should your penalty be? Do you agree with the judge that you owe some guy $10,000,000 for a trivial idea that he happened to have before you did?

<comment><USER6> See right here is the problem: in hindsight, you think the solution was easy.

 _[Kearns] first patent for the [intermittent wipers] was filed on December 1, 1964._ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns>

The 555 timer, however, _was designed and invented by Hans R. Camenzind ... in 1970 and introduced in 1971 by Signetics_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC>

The 555 didn't _exist_ when he invented his wipers. What is your solution now?

<comment><USER7> Without having read any docs or patents, I'd say some sort of bimetallic strip: two metals, different resistances/heat expansion constants. It's how they used to make turn signal timers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk lashes out at Apple's car ambitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/132157ee-6e17-11e5-aca9-d87542bf8673.html <comment><USER2> I'm unable to access this article without an FT subscription.

<comment><USER3> paste the title into google and get to it that way.

<comment><USER2> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Interviewing is Fucked - <AUTHOR> https://zachholman.com/posts/startup-interviewing-is-fucked/ <comment><USER2> Would you rather work with this person:

 _Interviewer: Okay now what if you couldn't use the standard library? Imagine it's a 200GB file and you have to do it all in memory in Ruby.

Me: Why the fuck would I do that?_

Or with this person:

 _Interviewer: Okay now what if you couldn't use the standard library? Imagine it's a 200GB file and you have to do it all in memory in Ruby.

Me: Ah what an unusual situation, to be using Ruby without the standard library. Well, I would do it like this: <writes 20 lines of code, there's a bug, they fix it themselves without prompting>_

While interviewing you might think a question is silly. But perhaps the interviewer has asked this question to 100 people and found it to lead to intelligent discussions that reveal a lot about job candidates. Don't assume that a process is a bad process just because it rejected you.

In particular, this sort of assumption seems designed to test your understanding of the linear stream processing type of programming. You probably wrote something that operated on an entire array, and the interviewer was curious to see if you were flexible enough to change that into an iterative algorithm. Perhaps you used a sort when you could have been slightly more efficient and used a single linear pass. A good programmer will be able to handle this, even if the specifics like "200GB file processed using Ruby with no standard library" are silly.

<comment><USER3> i'd much rather work with the first person

<comment><USER4> I don't believe that. What's going to be their response when you ask them to do something on the job that they don't want to do?

<comment><USER5> > that they don't want to do

This seems like a strawman.

If your point is that the author presented an interview vignette where the "Me", interviewee, character reacted to an unpleasant situation with less grace and courtesy than ideal, I doubt anyone would disagree. It was likely also just for emphasis and not to be taken literally, as it wasn't core to the point of the article.

It's not that the interviewee merely didn't _want_ to perform the exercise. It's that he questioned (or rejected) the premise of needing to do it that way. In the context of the interview, what would it show?

There are plenty of people who very much want to work with someone who will question and even push back on "going off the reservation" (as a comment up- thread put it).

<comment><USER4> It shows a willful stubbornness that is incredibly difficult to work with. Obviously I'm not asking you the question because I'm a masochist -- I'm asking it because I'm trying to glean something about your abilities. The fact that the author would rather flaunt their ego as a "real developer" than suspend disbelief for a few minutes marks them as unnecessarily argumentative in my mind.

<comment><USER5> So what you're saying is that you _don 't believe_ the GP because you come to a particular conclusion as to the signal that such a reaction in the interview sends about the character of the candidate?

Are you asserting it's impossible (for reasonable person) to come to any different conclusion as to the signal that it sends?

As compared with the author's suggested alternative, do you feel that asking such a question is a better way of determining both this signal _and_ the something about the candidate's abilities you were hoping to discover?

<comment><USER4> I'm not asserting anything. I'm asking the above poster to think about what kind of person responds in the first manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i used to recruit people without having them pass coding intervuew. Never again. It depends on the job of course, but for anything that involved writing lines of code, it's not even an option.

The main problem being that a bad developer can cripple your codebase for a long time before you actually realize it. And some people are good at pretending to know what they're doing.

i guess it's more of a matter on how your coding interview are conducted. I usually try to have the person design and code some features of a program solving a real life problem. And then we talk about it. This also let me see if the person is a good fit and is able to work in a team.

<comment><USER7> Yes.

We do some coding problems in our interviews, but it isn't puzzle-oriented or even requiring much knowledge of a standard library.

We're looking for basic stuff, like looking for a pattern in a list of items. Things were there will be multiple correct ways to implement it, and can choose an implementation language.

One candidate we had... oh boy. The guy could talk. Excellent, excellent verbal communication skills. He really sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But completely balked when it came to putting bits in a file. Just wouldn't / couldn't, even when I tried to talk him through the process.

My recommendation after the interview was a hard 'no', that we should under no circumstances hire this person. Management, apparently dazzled by the aforementioned communication skills, wanted to give this guy another interview, over my strong objections.

The second interviewer came to the exact same conclusion. Maybe they'll listen to me next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious about this embedded tweet:

> _I 've been twitter following the careers of people we interviewed but > passed on at my last gig._

> _Turns out we were almost always wrong._

I wonder how they established that they were wrong. How do you evaluate someone's performance at their next employer from their tweets alone?

<comment><USER9> I was thinking about that too. Maybe because that candidate moved on to another company doing XYZ, and they tweeted about it or already made an impact somewhere else.

EDIT: But really, I think its subjective or FOMO thinking on their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I try not to judge. If it's a company worth working for their contrived question usually has a point to it.

A good example: a few years ago I was given a take-home assignment for a language I had zero familiarity with it. I asked the recruiter about it, assuming it was a mistake, and she assured me it was intentional. Turns out the team had decided to optimize for people who can dive into complicated, unfamiliar domains and figure out a reasonably clean solution. In particular, this language had a feature explicitly for making problems of this sort easier and they were selecting for engineers who would be able figure that out.

That's not to say every company does it well -- I'm sure there are many cargo- cult interviewers out there -- but I certainly wouldn't say it's "fucked".

</comment><comment><USER10> I am guilty of doing interviews with silly questions (200gb file, in memory). I usually start off the test with something like "This is a silly contrived question, mainly we just want to see how you think. Talk about what tradeoffs you're making and why." It tends to work well - the candidate tends to not be so defensive or anxious and will relax a bit to walk through the problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10992640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10992640)</comment>