Apple Watch worn by Saudi journalist may have transmitted evidence of his death - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/12/middleeast/khashoggi-saudi-turkey-recordings-intl/ <comment><USER2> Not credible. The original source makes one bogus claim that the journalist's fingerprint was used to unlock Apple Watch. Nice idea, but Touch ID doesn't exist for watch. It would be active on his phone, but the same source reports that his phone was left with his fiancé, thus it wasn't on the guy when he disappeared.

CNN should do basic fact checking before reporting stuff like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> > CNN should do basic fact checking before reporting stuff like this.

And it did:

> However, on its website, Apple does not list fingerprint verification as one > of the Apple Watch's capabilities. A representative from the company > confirmed to CNN the watches do not have the feature.

<comment><USER2> You got me there. I still maintain that they should put that closer to the headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Remote health monitoring of an Apple watch seems to be a very interesting future service that likely is already here we just don't know about it widely yet.</comment>


Boston's Big Picture - Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/disaster_unfolds_slowly_in_the.html

<comment><USER2> Apparently, BP has had underwater videos of the leaks form the start but won't release them despite the fact that they could help independent scientists and engineers better assess the situation and help to find solutions. Only a couple still images have been released so far:

[http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/first-underwater- ima...](http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/first-underwater-images-of-bp- oil-spill-wont-show-video.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> If US had any balls left whatsoever, it should seize all BP owned properties in this country and use it to pay for the damages it had caused.

Realistically, BP is going to get off with a slap on the wrist. Taxpayers will pay for the cleanup, and Gulf people will suffer for the decades to come.

Oh... life... you're so cruel sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just wish Obama were down there leading the effort to clean this all up. There shouldn't be unemployed fishermen standing in line for handouts from the Catholic Charities. Everyone available there should be full tilt on cleanup. If I think there's anything the government should fund, it should be that (and then sue BP or whomever later).

<comment><USER5> In at least one picture, there is a shrimp boat towing booms.

Going full tilt on cleanup is probably not a good idea.

For instance cleaning up oiled birds may seem like the right thing to do, but the unfortunate reality is that even if you remove the oil from their feathers, the vast majority will die from shock and organ failure. Most experts believe the most humane course is actually to euthanize oiled birds. [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,693359,00.h...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,693359,00.html)

The same goes for other forms of cleanup, for instance aggressively cleaning fragile areas such as marshes may cause additional damage for little if any benefit. Dispersants are themselves toxic, and overuse may cause more harm than good.

 _THE best thing to do in response to the Gulf spill's landfall is ... nothing. Sure, larger oil concentrations can be sopped up, and large animals can be cleaned. But cleanup efforts can do only so much: evidence suggests that they reduce hydrocarbon concentrations only over the short term. And many responses have harmful side effects. Controlled burning spreads toxic materials and kills plants that retard erosion, thus hurting the very lands we're trying to protect. Nutrient-rich detergents or active bioremediation — which encourages the growth of bacteria that can break down oil — can fundamentally disturb the ecological balance for decades.

Instead, we should recognize that nature can do many things far better than we can, and with less collateral damage. Oil is a natural byproduct of biological and geological processes; if left alone in coastal environments, wave action, the sun and microbes in the sediment will naturally break down hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, money saved can go to helping local economies deal with the loss of income, improving safety regulations and enforcement and developing a clean energy policy._ — KEVIN M. YEAGER, assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/opinion/11oped2.html>

<comment><USER4> Surely, setting up booms to contain the oil (which is still flowing, and apparently will be for another couple of months until this relief well is done) would do much to limit the expanse of the spill.

This is not a completed oil spill. It is one growing by the day. Surely, containing the oil from spreading is at least something that should be attempted.

You say:

'In at least one picture, there is a shrimp boat towing booms.'

That is precisely my point. If that works, there should be more of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Gitolite 3.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite/blob/master/doc/CHANGELOG

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find a good overview of the changes, so I just linked to the changelog to make clear that it's a complete rewrite. For those who aren't familiar, "Gitolite allows you to setup git hosting on a central server, with fine-grained access control and many more powerful features."

<comment><AUTHOR> I found an explanation of the rewrite <http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/g3why.html></comment></comment>


Say the unsayable: countries get the HIV epidemics they deserve - <AUTHOR> http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2010/02/09/countries-get-the-hiv-epidemics-they-deserve/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, the general direction of this argument is uncomfortably close to, "gays get the HIV epidemic they deserve" (even for some of the same reasons this article cites).

In both cases we could probably have more rational discussions without that "deserve" word, which involves moral connotations. How about discussing: what kinds of sexual-relationship graphs are more or less conducive to the spreads of which kinds of disease?

I would guess there are actually a lot of factors, and more than unprotected promiscuity. Clearly unprotected promiscuity seems involved: the article's discussion of some recent African experience points that out, and so does the 80s gay bathhouse culture. But there are plenty of promiscuous cultures that appear _not_ to have high HIV prevalence, e.g. college-student bar-pickup and frat culture has very low HIV infection rates, even for people with 30+ partners and regular unprotected sex.

<comment><USER3> "college-student bar-pickup and frat culture has very low HIV infection rates, even for people with 30+ partners and regular unprotected sex"

Citation needed. I seriously doubt a major group of people can keep low infection rates with 30+ partners and regular unprotected sex. The only rational explanation would be regular HIV tests plus stopping on positive result - seems implausible.

<comment><USER4> In the US, AIDS is almost entirely confined to people that are either gay, or needle drug users.

<comment><USER5> If by "almost entirely confined" you mean approximately 70-75%[1]. This shouldn't be surprising: US culture pushes homosexuality underground, and is mostly uninterested in treating IV drug users outside of a few liberal enclaves.

[1] <http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5739a2.htm>

<comment><USER4> Maybe you're looking somewhere I'm not, but the 0.8% figure under the 'Other' Category would seem to support what I'm saying, since it excludes people knowing sleeping with people that are known to have AIDS, Needle Drug users, and gay males.

<comment><USER5> I really can't believe I'm having this argument in 2010.

You stated that it was confined to Gays and IV drug users. It's not. The statistics show heterosexuals contracting it. Whether they get it because they're sleeping with an IV drug user, someone who is homosexual, or another heterosexual who is classified as "high risk" doesn't matter: they're straight and they have HIV, therefor it's not "contained" to gays and IV users.

<comment><USER2> I agree he phrased it too strongly, but you could accurately say that it's effectively confined to MSM, IV users, and those two groups' immediate sexual partners.

That sort of analysis is pretty common in epidemiology, describing a particular outbreak as "confined to group A and immediate contacts of group A". For example, when looking at diseases associated with health-care workers, people in direct prolonged contact with them but who aren't themselves health- care workers, like family members, are often counted as basically honorary health-care workers (or at least treated as a group separate from the general public).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Vatican and their anti birth control stance should also receive a fair share of the blame. Matter of fact, I think the pope should be charged with crimes against humanity for this stance.

<comment><USER7> I always disliked this kind of thinking. Let me begin by saying I'm agnostic so I'm not actually church-biased.

The roman catholic church has rules and nobody is forced to follow those rules. If some people like to think they are roman catholics then they should follow those rules which include not having sex unless you are procreating.

Now you can say the church should evolve, become modern, and while that would be fair, it's also fair for the church to stand by their ideals.

You can insist and say they have a fair share of responsability for those who follow them which should make them evolve faster but people need to start thinking for themselves and think about what's more important: being roman catholic or using a condom?

I'd say there's only one way you comply to both: if you're married to someone HIV positive and want to procreate. If that's the case, you might want to think about your child which might carry HIV too.

edit: At the end of my post I said "your child which will probably carry HIV" but apparently it's not a high probability as pointed by sounddust so I changed it to "might carry". Thanks, sounddust!

<comment><USER8> The problem is the Catholic church is in a position of social respect and authority, and it spreads disinformation like:

Pope Benedict said on the eve of his trip that he wanted to wrap his arms around the entire continent, with "its painful wounds, its enormous potential and hopes".

HIV/Aids was, he argued, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem". [1]

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. [2]

The church can invent whatever rules it likes and people can chose to follow them or not, but spreading lies about condoms is not acceptable.

[1] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7947460.stm>

[2] <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids>

<comment><USER9> The Vatican also says that priests must be celibate, and yet the Catholic church in Africa is --- allegedly, according to Newsweek --- rife with married priests. Let's not overestimate the influence of the Pope. It wasn't the Catholic church telling people they could cure STDs by deflowering virgins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I seem to recall research indicating that strict monogamy is associated with higher incidence of HIV than more sexually liberated societies. The reason seems to be that in strict societies, in the absence of casual sexual encounters, many males frequent prostitutes, who become hyper-connected vectors of disease. With more casual sexual encounters, the graph is less connected.

And in polygamous cultures, there's a lack of women to go around, so there should be a similar dynamic re prostitution.

Of course, it's not all this simple - there are lots of factors at work.

<comment><USER11> 'frequent prostitutes' != 'strict monogamy'

<comment><USER12> I think it's safe to say that without extensive and widespread genetic engineering or effective mind control, a strictly monogamous _culture_ will have many members who frequently patronize prostitutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think "deserve" is the word to use here. They get the epidemics that their cultures perpetuate, sure, but that happens everywhere.

I hear Mormonism is rampant in Salt Lake City..

<comment><USER14> It's funny that you compared Mormonism to an AIDS epidemic.

But why wouldn't you say SLC deserves its Mormonism?

<comment><USER13> Well, it's a (slightly) tongue in cheek comparison.

I wouldn't say SLC 'deserves' its Mormonism. I was lucky enough to be raised agnostic / atheist. However, my parents also taught me that I should never take entrepreneurial risks in life. Because of that, I wasted over ten years working in dead end corporate jobs. But did I really deserve that?

By default, children inherit the beliefs of their parents. It's very difficult to break out of beliefs that you have followed for your entire life. If it took me ten years to figure out that corporate jobs were a dead end, imagine how long it would take someone to learn to think critically about religion when it claims their soul and essence are in jeopardy, or to break free of a culture that teaches women are inferior to men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What an idiotic premise. Nobody deserves to die from having sex.

<comment><USER16> _Nobody deserves to die from having sex._

The way the world works rarely follows our notions of what's fair or unfair. The laws of nature do as they will, and they are capricious.

Statements like yours really don't make any sense at all.

<comment><USER17> From the point of view of nature, nobody deserves anything. Shit just happens. It doesn't make sense to layer morality on top it, which is what the title of the article can be read as doing.

There are lots of ways to be stupid an irresponsible, but there is a very human tendency to treat ways of being stupid and irresponsible that involve sex as wicked rather than foolish.

It's a blind spot in our rationality that we have to compensate for, and the tone -- if not the substance -- of the article seems to fail to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is nonsense. I doubt that the Southern Part of Africa is more promiscuous than West Africa or Brazil or Sweden.

Yet the difference in infection rates are massive. And why does a warzone like Liberia have 1.7% infection rates?

See my post on this: <http://blog.cubeofm.com/suprising-facts-about-aids- in-2010>

To quote from the UN report:

"There has been a pervasive stereotype that in countries where men have multiple concurrent partners, there is a higher rate of AIDS. Well, according to the UN paper, "there is no significant correlation between prevalence of sexual concurrency and HIV prevalence at the country or community level."

That article is just wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> From her book: "All of Africa is poor. But not all of Africa has very high rates of HIV. HIV reaches very high levels only in areas where there are lots of simultaneous sexual partnerships, lots of untreated STIs and lots of uncircumcised men".

Here is the geographic distribution of male circumcision [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Global_Ma...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Global_Map_of_Male_Circumcision_Prevalence_at_Country_Level.png)

80-100% in most of West Africa.

Western countries such as Sweden have had education on the real causes of HIV transmission for many years, and encourage use of condoms, discourage sharing needles.

Brazil has had a fine response to HIV, including refusing to sign the US's 'loyalty oath' to receive PEPFAR money. This requires the recipient country to sign a statement saying they oppose prostitution. Brazil chose instead to regulate it, and lost $US50million in funding.

The author is an epidemiologist, who has lived in Kenya and Indonesia, working with gays, prostitutes and drug users (as well as 'waria' for whom we don't even have a word). She has been an author of many of the reports of UNAIDS itself. To dismiss the article as 'just wrong' appears misguided.

I'd really recommend you read her book- it's very readable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "over half a billion dollars of PEPFAR money a year, in part to promote abstinence, monogamy and condom use"

I am a bit surprised to hear that Americans pay other countries to promote abstinence and monogamy.

Also, men in power everywhere have lots of sex, it is natures way. I don't think the president single-handedly infected the nation with HIV. Not that I have any sympathies for him, just saying.

I always felt it was hypocritical to demand a pure christian marriage life from presidents.

</comment><comment><USER20> To be fair in the past the west took advantage of Africa, often saying it was for their own good. So look at the current plight with a bit of history and it makes sense why they don't trust the west.

No one certainly deserves to have an epidemic.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just want to point out this has (virtually? completely?) nothing to do with "hackers" -- and that's a good thing. It's nice to have a little variety on Hacker News from time to time. Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Note that this is _not_ necessarily true on a personal level (the adulterous- partner argument).

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to put it a bit differently: you never get what you _deserve_ ; you get what you _take_ \- and in the south of Africa, they've really been grabbing hands full of AIDS the past two decades.

There's an old saying that fits this metaphorically: _"you reap what you sow"._ Please enjoy your harvest. Let forth finally a smaller generation, of better health.

<comment><USER24> The last period makes me think about a generation immune to HIV. And about a short story by David Brin, The Giving Plague (www.davidbrin.com/givingplague.htm). Nice reading.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: You have $100/mo to invest in cryptocurrency, BTC, BTC Cash or Ether? - <AUTHOR> I have some expendable income every month and I'd like to have a stake in cryptocurrency. I find it interesting but my attention span is short, so having some funds involved would make it more interesting, and it's money I can afford to lose.
Obviously they're all a gamble, but I'm interested to hear which one people would pick. Bitcoin cash seems a bit unsteady with it being new, Bitcoin appears to be stronger than ever (when I thought the fork would lower its value) and Ethereum is backed by some fairly big names and recovering from its dip.
On a sidenote, if anyone has a platform to recommend feel free, as all I've been recommended is markets.com. <comment><USER2> Whatever you decide, set it up on a daily, weekly, or monthly deposit. Then forget about it. Delete all your crypto news alerts, take off all your crypto book marks. Do everything you can to take yourself out of the equation once the thing is set. Keep it boring, keep it consistent. Emotion is your greatest enemy while investing. But you're smart and you know all this.

<comment><USER3> Upvote. I have done this on Coinbase. I have recurring daily transactions created for Bitcoin and Ethereum, putting in $5 each. Coinbase charges me $0.15 in fees (3%) for each transaction. I realize that the fees have increased since I set this up, but I guess I'm grandfathered in.

FWIW, I've been lately thinking of adding an extra $2.50 each per day for Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.

As another poster has pointed out, dollar-cost averaging is your friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there an advantage to daily over weekly/monthly? It seems to me like w/m would make more sense as you'd get less fees?

<comment><USER4> The fees are percentage based, so the investment interval doesn't matter. $5/day gets you a $0.15 fee, $35 a week is $1.05. It all nets out to the same dent made.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which marketplace are you getting those fees from? I'm looking at Coinbase and its fees are quite a lot higher than that for using a Credit Card, and bank transfers cost a lot more.

<comment><USER3> Re: Coinbase, I have it setup to debit my bank account every day. The transactions go through between 2.45-3 PM EST daily, with 3% fees.

However, I just tried setting up a new transaction and the fee looks to be $0.99 for a $5 investment. At ~20%, this sort of averaging would no longer be worth it. Like I said before, I guess I've been grandfathered in after the new fees schedule was imposed. Let's see how long it lasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, why take the risk? If you are looking to invest long-term, just buy an index fund like $QQQ or $SPY and sit back and let it ride. You can use Robinhood to continue to buy without paying commissions (which is going to be crucial since commissions would take a large percentage on such a small investment amount).

<comment><USER6> Or setup a Vanguard account and enjoy free Vanguard ETF trades w/ ability to re-invest dividends as partial shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not actually gamble? For $1200/year you can have a couple fun trips to Reno (or somewhere else that isn't Las Vegas, which is way too expensive to be a low-stakes gambler). No legal or tax ambiguities unlike cryptocurrencies, free drinks and other comps -- its not a bad way to spend money you can "afford to lose".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the UK and I don't really find casino-style gambling fun, plus it's all over pretty quick. I agree there are plenty of ways to spend 'afford to lose' money, but I'm a geek and cryptocurrency piques my interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not diversify your portfolio and invest in all three? Coindesk.com supports BTC and ETH, though not BTH.

<comment><USER5> The problem with diversifying hundreds of dollars is it does not move the needle. What's earning 7% a year on $100, earns you a large Starbucks.

Now this completely changes once you get above 20k invested. Then, diversity is more important and earning 7% a year moves the needle.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin has historically gone up much faster than 7% a year and can go down much faster too. Currency being what it is, it is to everyone's benefit to eventually agree on one. In most cases, it is not useful to diversify, but with crypto's make or break, your $100 could be worth $100k in the future or $0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Check out r/NEO on reddit and learn on [http://neo.org](http://neo.org)

One thing that makes NEO cool is that it generates another coin in it's ecosystem called GAS which you get for just holding it in your wallet. Make sure you move NEO from an exchange unless you're using Binance (which lets you generate GAS on the exchange)

It just hit Top 10 on [http://coinmarketcap.com](http://coinmarketcap.com) yesterday

<comment><USER11> NEO is backed by Chinese venture capital.

Unlike other more open and honest or at least auditable crypto currency systems, NEO aka antshares was 100% premined which is incredibly dubious and indicative that many of the shares were selectively distributed to individual 'whales' who can and will easily dump their holdings.

<comment><USER10> There is no "premine" \-- they were created, locked, and distributed.

<comment><USER11> Semantics.

Premine is a term for cryptocoins where traditionally, the start date of the network is announced after the mining protocol and software is released to the public.

When a cryptocoin dev team intentionally takes control of part of the supply of the cryptocoins before releasing the minting protocol/process/supply to the general public then it's considered 'pre-mined' because traditionally as with BTC/LTC/DOGE/etc, the public was informed of the protocol and presumably all users given access to generate the coins as a reward for fueling the network activity.

In the case of antshares, the basecoin being %100 premined would almost seem more like a stock in the project as apparently coin ownership is a precursor to generating the secondary token which is used as fuel for the services provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are we talking long term investment, or do you want to play with speculation? If they first, I'd say it's neither - just go with some real fund, possibly via your bank. If you want to speculate - all of them. Setup a few buy orders at various levels below current price and wait for the next big event / crash / exchange fail / ...

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter really, more for fun and experience as I've never done anything remotely like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you live outside of the US, consider investing in an index fund that tracks multiple cryptos: [https://www.iconomi.net/dashboard/#/INDEX](https://www.iconomi.net/dashboard/#/INDEX)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the UK, but what makes this better outside vs. inside the US?

<comment><USER13> Americans are not allowed to invest in it (yet).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that makes sense then, thanks for the swift reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Investing is about creating assets and having a diversity of assets. Assuming that $100/month is one part of your expendable income that you have considered for crytocurrency - you are in good hands. However if you are putting 100% of your expendable amount in cryptocurrency - do revisit other options.

Do also go through [https://www.wealthfront.com/questions](https://www.wealthfront.com/questions) and other finance portals to see how they allocate your investments amount based on risk profile, age and goals.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ask yourself,

What's the personal value to me or someone else of owning this unit of currency, in terms of purchases enabled and transaction costs avoided?There are frequently financial bubbles, where people just buy because you expect the value to see further appreciation and sell to a greater fool. Unfortunately such bubbles inflate slowly but collapse rapidly:

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

</comment><comment><USER16> It really depends on your objectives. Just want to save some fiat? Go 85% BTC/15% ETH this way you can ride the BTC price rises and still enjoy xx% gains on ETH. Or you can do what the most opportunistic do and go 100% ETH and then diversify that into ERC-20 tokens built on top of the Ethereum protocol. Now obviously you should do your due diligence but hopefully this can give you some ideas.

<comment><USER17> But if you go 100% ETH, make sure you watch Rootstock very closely [http://www.rsk.co/](http://www.rsk.co/).

Executing the Ethereum VM and smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not BTC or Ether. And in no way Bitcoin Cash. As i invested a bit more time in Cryptocurrencies, i'm mainly looking for newer coins that could have a bright future (always read and understand whitepapers).

I would currently go for Wagerr, IOTA, SIA and TenX. For IOTA and TenX, i still need to read the Whitepaper in Detail, but they look very promising.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd go all in on Iota.

Transactions without a fee, Scalable. Meant for Machine to Machine Payments. The internet of things, nano transactions.. Doesn't use a blockchain but instead uses a Tangle. It's quite early and the tech may seem new but it does solve a lot of the scaling issues wrought with "blockchains".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should point out that I'm in the UK, if that makes a difference.

</comment><comment><USER20> Questions like this are showing that the bubble is about to pop...

</comment><comment><USER21> I own about 30 different currencies, all stored on paper wallets. I recommend avoiding "wealth centralization" on any one currency.

<comment><USER22> 30 different cryptocurrencies? How do these paper wallets work? Do you keep them in a safe deposit box or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neither you are literally paying people to waste electricity. Invest in a company that actually makes something people use

<comment><USER24> Look beyond headlines and you'll see that the vast majority of cryptocurrency mining is powered by regionally oversupplied renewable power. Here's the biggest in the world located in Iceland, its 100% renewable.

[https://youtu.be/rsSuay53kIc](https://youtu.be/rsSuay53kIc)

Same story in western China and the Pacific north west filed with mining company's taking advantage of hydroelectric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> some BTC and ETH, but also consider adding monero (XMR) to the mix. it's a wildcard, but it's fungible. XMR is also trending in illicit use (laundering and trafficking), which will probably help its price in the short-to-mid term.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems like a ridiculously off-topic question.

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://www.coinbase.com](https://www.coinbase.com) is great for simplicity. Diversifying with BTC/ETH/LTC is a good strategy to minimize risk.

You can use my referral link to earn extra BTC when you purchase :D [https://www.coinbase.com/join/5927caaa2cc81a08f16dab25](https://www.coinbase.com/join/5927caaa2cc81a08f16dab25)

[https://www.gdax.com/](https://www.gdax.com/) is a more advanced trading platform (same company as Coinbase). Expect lower fees in exchange for managing your own trades

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine that does invest in to BTC and ETH said he "wouldn't bother with LTC" but I didn't ask why and haven't looked in to it, I'll do some reading up on it tomorrow.

<comment><USER28> critical thinking:

and do you think that is anywhere near objective?

why would that qualify outside of him being the "cryptocurrency savant" and you not being one?

what would make your understanding of that statement objective?

Somehow Litecoin traded from $3.00 to $46.00 with many enthusiasts saying the same thing for half a decade, was there somebody saying something else?

Does your friend have the exact same investment risk profile as you would?

factors...

<comment><USER29> Yes, LTC went up 10x in the same timespan that almost every reasonable coin went up 10x. That says nothing about the fundamentals of LTC. LTC simply has no value proposition after segwit on bitcoin and the alt coin rennaisance.

<comment><USER11> BTC is susceptible to ASIC attacks which has inevitably lead to the network being taken over by custom hardware producers.

LTC and other coins use more resilient algos like script to prevent that type of network compromise.

<comment><USER17> There are scrypt ASICs for Litecoin as well. Anything that can be computed, will be centralized and moved to the place with the cheapest power and the loosest regulations...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla's forgotten co-founder wants to electrify America's garbage trucks - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/350037/teslas-forgotten-co-founder-wants-to-electrify-americas-garbage-trucks/

<comment><AUTHOR> These are the applications where the silent aspect of electric cars truly benefits those in the community. Having a silent garbage truck going around at 5am wakes significantly less people up.

Also not having to drive behind one that sends all sorts of diesel fumes to you would be a welcome addition as well.</comment>


GPL, ScummVM and violations - <AUTHOR> http://sev-notes.blogspot.com/2009/06/gpl-scummvm-and-violations.html <comment><USER2> Any particular reason this is coming up now? Has there been a change in the situation since June 2009? Honest question; I'm not saying this isn't interesting, I'm just curious if there's any particular reason to bring it up again today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, no. The VLC in App Store thing a few days ago reminded me of it is all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why on earth would Nintendo ban open source software on the Wii?

<comment><USER4> My suspicion is that GPL'd software linked against the official Nintendo SDK could require release of parts of that SDK, which Nintendo wants to keep _tight_ control over.

<comment><USER5> I don't think any sane reading of the GPL would imply that it "taints" a host platform (via its libraries), whereas the inverse, non-GPL code linking against GPL libraries, certainly can be argued. Maybe that's something that they don't want to go to court to prove though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it possible for anyone to start a GPL-infringement suit, or does everything have to pass through the FSF?

<comment><USER7> As far I understand it, if you are a copyright owner and your copyright is being infringed, you can start the suit.

In fact, generally (at least) the FSF will only take up lawsuits when it involves infringement against their own copyright. That is one reason why they suggest that if you are writing GPL software, then you should assign copyright to them.

<comment><USER8> For the record I don't think the FSF asks that all GPL software gets assigned to them. However for all GNU software (bash, gcc etc) They want copyright assignment.

<comment><USER7> My bad. I knew that they didn't really ask for assignment to them for all GPL software, but I was under the impression that at some point, at least, they were suggesting something along the lines of "if you want our legal representation then feel free to assign the copyright to us". Not in a mafia 'protection' way, either, but more of a logistics thing than anything.

Either way, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I can completely understand why they want copyright assignment with the GNU software, though. Having everyone keep their copyright 'feels' nice, but how many projects have we seen that end up almost frozen because they want to do something with the license but can't find all of the copyright owners, let alone get them to agree?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 2D multiplayer battle royale game - <AUTHOR> http://surviv.io/ <comment><USER2> I enjoyed this. One suggestion: scopes currently are over-powered in an uninteresting way. One thing that works well for top-down games is to not have the view purely centered on the player, but to have it move in the direction of the mouse pointer. That way, I see more in the direction I'm looking and less "behind" me, which is realistic. A scope then allows me to see even further in the direction I'm looking, but hence less behind me. This seems like the right balance and requires more skill to handle the trade-off properly. You can even go further and have, when the mouse is aimed sufficiently far from the player, for the screen far from the mouse to black out. Thereby allowing a "sniper scope" effect.

Does anyone here remember BaboViolent 2? All of these suggestions were done in that, particularly for the sniper rifle weapon (my personal favorite). In that game, it was important to balance your mouse pointer at a "kinda far" distance with the sniper rifle that wasn't so far that the screen blacked out and hence you still had peripheral vision but still got an increased field of view.

<comment><USER3> I liked your thoughts/suggestions. It's possible to expand even further on the realism of FOV in 2D games, see this example [1]. It changes the gameplay mechanics significantly, of course.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfG9MTFbEZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfG9MTFbEZ8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nicely done! Safe to say that I think you beat many people (including me) to the punch. I think this is the perfect representation of the battle royale genre for browsers and I think many of the mechanics were inventive (such as the scope attachments increasing your FOV).

Considering I could jump in at any time and find a game, it seems quite popular. One mild criticism, and maybe it's a result of my apparent lack of skill, is that I've played three games so far and have come across ammo in none of them. I'm assuming the ammo was taken by my opponents, but it would be nice if it were a little more abundant. Great work!

<comment><USER5> I found ammo in boxes next to the guns. But I didn't at first see it as ammo, I thought it was some kind of barrier and moved on. So maybe it's a matter of making that more obviously ammo looking ? Like a stack of bullets ?

<comment><USER6> Seconded. It took me a while until I noticed that the small colored squares are ammo - I only realized it after I noticed a label popping up and disappearing as I moved over them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Man this is really, really good. I've built a lot of these games with better graphics, maps and weapon variety etc, but the battle royale mechanic works awesome. It's a lot more fun than anything I've ever built, and one of the better 2d shooter experiences I've had in 1-2 decades. Well done!

Hope to see this evolve!

</comment><comment><USER8> Ha, didn't realize it was FFA. I thought everyone with a blue helmet was an ally until I was rudely killed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice, but it's only playable with a qwerty keyboard. Could you allow reconfiguring keys, particularly AWSD?

</comment><comment><USER10> Great work. Might be more interesting and survival'y with real line of sight.

Like check out the game Nox. First result for "Nox multiplayer gameplay": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGbJvbDMEf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGbJvbDMEf8)

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems in firefox 57 (linux) that firefox is auto searching when hitting wasd keys. I've not had this issue when airma.sh was presented on HN. I'm assuming a preventdefault or autocomplete=off tag is missing somewhere.

Besides that minor issue, so far quite entertaining!

</comment><comment><USER12> Would like some info, like a blog post, about stack etc. How long did it take ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Does this game use bots at all? The magic of paper.io disappeared when I found out that I wasn't playing against any human players.

</comment><comment><USER14> How am I supposed to walk an pick things up with the same finger?!

More generally, I want to be able to change the controls.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am playing on a laptop and when I use the movement keys it stops updates from my touchpad, so I can't look around while I'm running around. Is this a bug in the game or with my laptop/touchpad driver? Any ideas?

<comment><USER16> It's a feature in your touchpad driver. You should be able to disable it. It's palm rejection to prevent you to move the mouse while typing text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very cool! One bit of feedback its a pain to have to whitelist all the IP addresses for the game server. Can you associate a DNS and connect by name, this will make it easier with selective js filtering by domain?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is the source code available?

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty fun. My favorite feature so far is bullets bouncing off metal buildings.

The server-side movement is unfortunate, but understandable.

At first I thought the brown crates were just barriers, but I learned pretty quickly.

<comment><USER4> I've built '.io' games of my own and by far the toughest part was the client- server communication, state management, and client-side interpolation. In my experience, the person with the lowest latency has the best experience overall while those with ping >=100 tend to suffer quite a bit more than you'd expect. I'm not well-versed enough in networking to make this statement confidently, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe the lack of UDP for browser games greatly limits how smooth the experience can be for everyone. It might just be a matter of being enough of an expert to hide the issue though. Hopefully one day I'll figure that out myself!

<comment><USER20> It's not a UDP or TCP problem. Some of these games are highly latency sensitive, typically you die if you failed to move within a quarter of a second. They will be unplayable on any mobile or poor wifi connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is fantastic! Hope to see updates, I expect this will remain in my bookmarks for a long time to come.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is surprisingly fun to play. Lots to be done here that could make this truly addictive.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'll check it out on my desktop but when visiting the site on iPhone it's kind of a mess.

</comment><comment><USER24> Your 2d version is a great way to prototype and test game strategies for actual 3d pubg.

</comment><comment><USER25> Extremely choppy on Firefox 57/Win10, quad core Ryzen with 16GB and a GTX 1060 (not that the GPU should matter). This is on a 100Mbit cable connection. It was worst when I got zerg rushed, but even just roaming around the map was too choppy to be playable.

</comment><comment><USER26> wasd for movement versus f for picking up things is very hard to use.

<comment><USER10> Well, it's a ubiquitous convention in gaming.

<comment><USER27> I think E is the convention.

<comment><USER10> Both E and F are used in this game for common actions.

<comment><USER20> The point was probably that WASD is unplayable on a non American keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why does this connect to multiple raw IP addresses with no domain names?

<comment><USER10> No real point in routing it through DNS except to entertain a few nerds looking at the network tab.

<comment><USER29> or, like in my case, when you've got umatrix running.

<comment><USER17> bingo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> how can I shoot? left clicking doesn't

<comment><USER31> Do you have ammo? does left-click punch when you spawn?</comment></comment>


Michael Abrash Virtual Reality keynote talk (starts  26min) - <AUTHOR> https://f8.facebooklive.com/videos/530/keynote-why-virtual-reality-will-matter-to-you

<comment><AUTHOR> This also contains a really nice collection of illusions and Abrash goes into a bit more detail than usual to explain them.</comment>


Google engineers: We're trying to fix Android fragmentation - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584973-93/google-engineers-were-trying-to-fix-android-fragmentation/

<comment><USER2> _Device makers and the wireless operators that sell smartphones and tablets to consumers haven't been able to keep up._

While you could call this trivially true if you assume that this is a goal of theirs and they are actually trying, I think it misses the reality that operators don't care, at all, whether your device is up to date in terms of the OS once you've signed on for your plan.

It would be a very interesting challenge to attempt an OS that could be kept up to date in terms of base functionality while still allowing carrier bastardization at a different layer. However, this is a goal that, it seems to me, would have best been addressed ten years ago.

<comment><USER3> _I think it misses the reality that operators don't care, at all, whether your device is up to date in terms of the OS once you've signed on for your plan_

I think it's more likely that they care, but in complex and conflicting ways that aren't always obvious to the general consumer.

When you first buy the device (if it's close to launch), they probably care because your opinions inform others quite a bit, so hey want to make you happy and generate positive feedback.

Close to the launch of a new flagship device, they probably would prefer to delay updates for other/older models, to help adoption and uptake of the new model.

Throughout the entire time, they care enough to not generate too much negative feedback about their products such that it affects the marketplace.

<comment><USER4> Either way its evidence that rolling out OS upgrades to hardware shouldn't be left up to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google's "Play Services" library is a long-needed end run around slow carrier updates for delivering new APIs, but will it be available on non-"Google Experience" Android devices that aren't allowed to pre-install Google apps or the Google Play Store itself? Or is the Play Services library a way for Google to lock Android app developers into Google's version of Android?

<comment><USER6> "Google Experience" means that the device is running regular Android, without some weird TouchWiz or Sense skin. I'm certain the new services will be available for non-GE devices because those are the ones that are "fragmented".

It seems doubtful that they'll be available on devices that don't have Google Play installed, because Play Services is part of Google Play. Apps that require Google Play (e.g. for in-app purchases or license validation) already need to find some other option if they want to run on devices running stripped-down Android distributions.

I don't think it's fair to characterize this as lock-in, because apps are free to use some other mechanism to implement provided features (or just disable them if not available).

<comment><USER7> You're describing what Google calls the "Nexus Experience". The parent was describing "Google Certified" android devices, AKA non-AOSP devices.

<comment><USER6> "Nexus" is a device brand. "Google Experience" is a description of a software configuration. All Nexus phones released so far have been "Google Experience" devices, but there are also some non-Nexus devices marketed as "Google Experience", such as the Motorola Xoom.

<comment><USER7> Ahh, you're right, I'd forgotten about the Xoom. "Google Experience" is the old name, "Nexus Experience" is the new name they're using with the S4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The other thing is that there is an additional type of fragmentation happening on the Android platform: users. Samsung's aggressive advertising has brought a huge class of users who are less technical but also more likely to buy apps as opposed to pirate them i.e. more valuable.

Hence as a developer it would be wise to just test my apps on Samsung devices and not worry about anything else. Likewise if Samsung were to have custom APIs I would be forced to not instantly dismiss them.

</comment><comment><USER9> I must have missed the memo about fragmentation being bad.

However, if the Android folks really do want to zip the stack up (from the kernel to UI) all the way to a common interface, for example, they are going to have to start with the kernel in a way carriers seem unlikely to get behind - namely getting bleeding edge drivers into the mainline tree in a coordinated way that would make desktop ARM distributions on phones much more likely. If not, separate houses will just go on keeping their forks alive and maintaining their increasingly separate interfaces, since the forks start lower. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be what is meant by fixing fragmentation however.

IMHO, the Android UI should just be a packaged environment like Unity or Gnome or KDE. It seems unlikely that we'll see a Debian package for Android any time soon though, but that would be a move in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER10> This appears to actually be the chat in question: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5OOJDIrYls>

</comment><comment><USER11> I think at this point it's too late. The genie is out! Fragmentation is a bit like entropy, it's hard to put it back in order.

The main issue is, the largest Android hardware vendor has no inherent interest to follow Google. Samsung sees itself as the next Apple and they want to tackle both hardware/software differentiation to maintaing market dominance. Unless google wants to follow Samsung, the fragmentation will be around.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's ever too late. Sure, it's sub-optimal, a lot of people are still on 2.x, but 4.x has finally overtaken:

[http://www.techspot.com/news/51862-android-4x-installations-...](http://www.techspot.com/news/51862-android-4x-installations- overtake-23-gingerbread-after-17-months.html)

Assuming Android will be around for many years, they can fix the vast majority if this issue.

<comment><USER13> That said, Google changed the way those stats are recorded. It used to be based on all phones that connect to their servers. Now it is based on logins to the Google Play store "because they are more active". That's why the line graphs of version share over time are no longer on the dashboard, because it would show a big discontinuity where they changed their methodology.

That said, just like on the web it's all about what your users have. My app has roughly 25% Gingerbread and 75% Ice Cream Sandwich or newer. I hope that holds, but there really is no way to stop building for Gingerbread even with the majority on the newer versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe there is a reason for not letting developers talk to the press. This is not good marketing...

<comment><USER15> This is developers talking to developers, at Google IO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> With Samsung trying to create their own ecosystem, you would think Google would be trying to make a Galaxy killer.

</comment><comment><USER17> Having a Windows Phone, 8.0. Updates come in all the time from the Marketplace.

Which in turn updates every thing on the phone. MSoft designed it so that every function is an app. No need to update the entire os, but rather just the app. Ive seen updates for Utils and diagnosis tools come in as well as your regular app.

Maybe its something the Android Team needs to look into. Even though their is carrier bastardization, it still allows for real partial updates of internal Android Apps.

<comment><USER18> _> No need to update the entire os_

You're wrong.

[http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how- to/wp8/basics/windows-...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how- to/wp8/basics/windows-phone-8-update-history)

 _> Maybe its something the Android Team needs to look into._

How Windows Phone updates _actually_ work is exactly the same as how Android updates work: the OS is updated, and these days, the apps (even Google's) are broken out into separate updates. Google was doing this before Microsoft, so Google would not need to learn anything from Microsoft, in this regard.

<comment><USER17> Before you attack me, maybe you should try owning a Windows Phone.

I am speaking from experience. You are just speaking from things you found on the internet.

<comment><USER18> I wasn't attacking you, I was saying you were wrong -- and you were wrong.

And I actually do own two Windows Phones (one is a developer "HTC Mazaa" unit given to me by Microsoft after being one of the winners of a Windows Phone development competition, and the other is a WP8 Lumia) and I develop for Windows Phone. Has Microsoft given _you_ a developer phone lately?

Seriously though, don't presume to know my experience level.

<comment><USER17> Not to toot my own horn, but yes actually. I was given a windows 6.0, 6.5 CE, 7.0, and I'm actually currently using the phone the gave me from their developer conference. 8.0.

seems like there is a lot of presuming going around. I'll apologize now and say I am sorry to have offended you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Idea: Karma exchange  - <AUTHOR> http://thaumatography.com/?p=21

<comment><USER2> The main issue, the same problem you would have if every bank could print their own money.

If any site could issue karma and Karma was accepted at many sites and redeemable to goods you would habe a major problem with the value of karma.

Unless the sites were issued a fixed amount of karma that they could in turn give to their users.

<comment><AUTHOR> The exchange would be used to determine the relative value of karma from different sites - like a currency or stock exchange. So if you wanted to track hacker news karma with karma from reddit someone would have to be willing to trade with you, and they could set the exchange rate (i.e. 2-1, 1.63 to 1 etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Heck, I'd just settle for one ID that works EVERYPLACE.

But back to the Karma...Yeah that would be neat.</comment>


Fresh Twitter data on Infochimps, plus Announcing Trst.me - <AUTHOR> http://blog.infochimps.org/2010/04/27/fresh-twitter-data-on-infochimps-plus-announcing-trst-me/

<comment><USER2> A few months ago I talked to infochimps (I got their contact info thanks to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989180>)

I asked for a copy of the social graph so I could build exactly the kind of service provided by trst.me. Joseph Kelly told me I was "on to something", but they never gave me a copy of the data.

I really hope they had every intention of releasing this service before my correspondence with them. But after seeing this, the tin foil hatter in me can't help but get the nagging sensation that maybe I shouldn't have made public my intention and just gone ahead with my own crawl of twitter. Oh well, there goes my research project.

<comment><USER3> Sorry to break it to you, but computing page rank for Twitter followers really isn't that much of a revolutionary idea. It is, after all, one of the most successful measurements for rank on social graphs. Ranking apps for Twitter are popular, so you only have to put 2 and 2 together to hit upon the idea.

I have pondered it myself, but alas, didn't act on it. I am very sure I am not the only one.

Google already searches Twitter, too, they are bound to use some form of page rank as well.

<comment><USER2> Centrality analysis can get much more sophisticated than PageRank (which is why Google uses PageRank only as a part of their overall search relevancy computation). But even exposing something as trivial as a PageRank for twitter is extraordinarily valuable for a number of use cases, especially since, AFAIK, no one has done it before.

<comment><USER3> Nothing against PageRank or whatever analysis, I just thought it a bit wild to suspect that infochimps stole your idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I suggest reading the blog post but here is a direct link to the app as well. Really cool!

<http://trst.me/>

<comment><USER4> The color data is very interesting. My Twitter app uses the color from users profiles to stylize their individual tweets to their followers. It adds a lot of personality and breaks up the black/white monotony.

Feel free to give it a try - <http://loritweet.com></comment></comment>


Developing World Phone - <AUTHOR> http://simeramov.com/2010-07-phone

<comment><USER2> (BTW, it's interesting and welcome that you direct discussion to HN.)

" _The hacker doth protest too much, methinks._ "

The big issue I see here is the battery. You've got a set of tradeoffs that I suspect are going to result in different choices for feature phones in the developed vs. developing world:

The bigger the battery, the greater the cost.

The bigger the battery, the longer it can go without recharging.

The bigger the battery, the longer it will live (all things being equal (and it's more complicated than this, I gather), the lifetime of the battery is strongly coordinated with the number of recharge cycles).

Lithium-ion batteries have a finite "shelf-life", time and heat (including ambient) are enemies.

So given the above, you ideally want the smallest battery that provides adequate time between charges and that dies from exceeding its maximum number of recharge cycles about the time it would die from plain old age and/or when the phone itself will die.

Making the battery bigger than this is wasted cost (including size and weight), unless you need the larger capacity for some reason. "Developing world" phones may have a bias towards larger batteries since large parts of it have higher ambient temperatures. Various parts of this market are willing to trade off the higher cost of a larger battery because the opportunity to recharge whenever you want to is not there (many countries don't supply electricity 24x7, many areas don't supply it at all, you need someone's generator).

And of course in the "developing world" cost is a even more important consideration.

BTW, for my own reasons I too have a Nokia "developing world" candy bar feature phone, a 1600 I bought near the end of 2007 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1600>). It's now discontinued, and I suspect from comparing it to your 1616 that the latter is its replacement. Yours has a slightly smaller battery (800 vs. 900mAh) with a longer standby time and a much longer talk time:

<http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1600-1188.php>

<http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1616-3007.php>

<comment><AUTHOR> This phone is around 30 euros before taxes, unlocked and free. I don't think the battery is particularly larger than in other models, it's just that the phone itself is quite economic in its use of it, I guess. There are few features and it uses simpler software.

Batteries are getting better all the time so this should be a case of the new, modern battery and simple technology which gives it prolonged use. If they really wanted I would bet they could make it to hold even longer before charges. It is a matter of tradeoffs as you say.

I have a bigger issue with the fact many people consider such phones are for poor people or for developing countries. I for the fact, _want_ such a phone on purpose. Hell I wouldn't even mind the colorless screen. This is what irks me. Such phones are becoming increasingly rare and difficult to buy. I do not want a camera, mp3 player, FM radio, browser, apps, MMS and gazillion other gimmicks. I want to make calls and send/receive SMS without charging it every few damn days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting opinion - but you're not the only one. :-)

My current phone is a Nokia 1208 - it offers all necessary functionality, a good battery life and was cheap to buy unlocked. My only criticism is the phone's thickness of 1.7cm - and that's why I'm interested in the C-models.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you know where to get this model of phone in the USA? I would like to get one as a backup phone, and for world travel. It's also interesting in that it can hold two simcards.

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea. Try going to nokia.com and then look through locations to buy from, or online stores.

I believe the Nokia C1-00 has the ability for two SIM cards (on demand, not simultaneously) and 1616 does not. Otherwise, they are the same.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't keyboards have braille? - <AUTHOR> In reading How Technology Is Besting My Blindness, a person's account of how technology helps him mitigate and overcome the challenges of his disappearing eyesite, I began to wonder why keyboards don't commonly include brail on the keys.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/how-technology-is-besting-my-blindness
I'm a competent, sighted touch-typist, but even so I still have to occasionally look at the keyboard to find a little-used key, or one that's been moved or oddly sized relative to other keyboards.
The reason this works for me is that ... the name of the key is printed on the key. It's great to be sighted.
I imagine, with no experience or evidence, that there may be apps that help sight-challenged people learn what each key is. And I don't know whether braille is anywhere close to universally learned.
So the question is posed: Why don't keyboards include braille, and why is there no movement to make it so?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=braille+keyboards&ia=products <comment><USER2> They do exist[1], and you can get braille stickers to add to normal qwerty keyboards[2].

The reason there's not a wider movement to make braille QWERTY keyboards easily available is that most people just don't want them.

[1] [http://www.electronickeyboards.com/braille- keyboards.html](http://www.electronickeyboards.com/braille-keyboards.html) [2] [https://www.amazon.com/Braille-Keyboard-Stickers-Visually- Im...](https://www.amazon.com/Braille-Keyboard-Stickers-Visually- Impaired/dp/B001BPYJQO)

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite a few keyboards have some sort of tactile way of telling if your hands are on the "home row". The Macbook pro I'm using has small lines under the F and J keys. That's all you need to position if you can touch type.

I suppose that's not perfect if you can't find the key, but echoing what you type is enough for most cases.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always been interested in having some kind of tangible feedback on each key. Braille might be a decent solution for at the very least a-z keys.

I'm not sure what you want to do for the rest of the keys, shift for example, you want to annotate the shift key with "⠩⠊⠋⠞"? And other keys like alt, ctrl, insert etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't know what to put on the other keys. Whatever is most useful to sight-challenged people. Maybe the traditional typewriter keys don't need anything, just the keys around the edges.

EDIT: OT, I was mildly surprised that Google Translate doesn't translate braille.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Typing with braille on every key would be uncomfortable imho. I have used blank key caps for many years now though, and I believe it's not a large problem for majority of blind users.

<comment><USER6> I can totally not type blindly when not sitting perfectly. E.g. reaching over to the side to type in something when using a beamer. How does this work for you?

<comment><USER7> I'm not him but I genuinely can't remember the last time I needed to actually look at my keyboard, regardless of where or how I'm positioned.

Although I don't find my fingers on the keyboard from the homerow nubs, I use the caps lock and return keys as my finger landmarks.

It's probably (read: definitely) because I'm a heavy PC gamer, but looking now I've just noticed that my 'fingers resting on keyboard' pose is... odd, to the say the least.

Fingers from left to right, left hand: shift, A, W, D, space (which is sorta to be expected) Right hand: right alt, J, O, [, return

<comment><USER6> I moved my awd one to the right. If I really like a game I go through the pain of adjustig all controls one key to the left :) I'm more of a casual gamer though. Only things with short rounds and online multiplayer for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is very interesting! I think I might get some braille stickers for my keyboard - it seems like it would not only provide me with some physical feedback I can distinguish keys by instead of glancing down once in a while, but also result in my actually learning braille.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get a cheap keyboard and experiment with superglue (make dots with with a toothpick or something) (might be best to ask somone sighted to do it maybe).

I have some shuffled keys and indicated the keys for my index fingers with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> no idea - but I too would love to have braille on my keyboard and display

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if this would encourage sighted people to learn braille?

<comment><USER10> I don't think it would 'encourage' (as in motivate) me - but I expect that I _would_ * learn braille.

After a while of using one, I expect that if I touched (or is it 'read'?!) some braille, I'd just think:

> _Oh - feels like an 'a'._

* So if you meant 'encourage' as in 'support', yes, sorry, I agree. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Rental e-scooters to be made legal on UK roads from Saturday - Pick-A-Hill2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53219331 <comment><AUTHOR> _Privately owned e-scooters remain illegal on roads._

I don't understand why they have chosen this route. Are they expecting to reverse this decision at some point?

</comment><comment><USER2> However the execution will be tricky. So far electric bike hire doesn't appear to have succeeded that well in London (Hackney at least).

Very much hoping this works better!</comment>


Lang: Python module for enforcing programming language constraints - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amitassaraf/lang <comment><USER2> This is an impressive library, but I don't really see the usefulness. That is either because I'm a Python programmer, and Java semantics aren't useful in Python, or because I'm a Python programmer, and I haven't used Java semantics, so I wouldn't know.

I _can_ say, though, that I've never had problems with something accessing private variables that it shouldn't have. The meaning of private variables in Python isn't "don't access anything that starts with an underscore", rather it's "you're accessing these variables at your own risk".

This "we're all adults" model has worked out very well for my use cases. Can anyone share a few cases where hard constraints here would be beneficial?

<comment><USER3> It feels like it might work better used as a test/verify step, but doesn't have the mechanics to be toggled on and off easily.

I can see the value in quickly knowing if new code is mucking with private/protected properties.

<comment><USER4> > I can see the value in quickly knowing if new code is mucking with > private/protected properties.

Would this do it?

        re.findall(r'(?<!self)\._\w+', sourcelines)

Anytime you're using ``obj._foo`` and it's not ``self._foo`` that suggests you're mucking about with the internals of an object that the author didn't expect you to use.

<comment><USER3> That would miss some things, like iteration of all properties without a direct reference, subclasses accessing _Parent__private stuff, etc.

I'm not actively looking for a solution, just noting this might be more well received if you could easily turn it off and on.

Edit: Again, not looking for solutions. I thought the feedback of being able to turn it on/off might be useful for the OP.

<comment><USER4> Well, for your future reference, Pylint ([https://www.pylint.org/](https://www.pylint.org/)) checks for that and many other common pitfalls. I'm sure its competitors PyChecker and Pyflakes do so as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes me a little sad. So, a few observations:

\- The use of metaclasses for (almost?) every feature in this library makes it prone to metaclass conflicts. What if I want to inherit from two classes that use two different features from the library?

        >>> class MetaOne(type):
        ...     pass
        ...
        >>> class MetaTwo(type):
        ...     pass
        ...
        >>> class One(metaclass=MetaOne):
        ...     pass
        ...
        >>> class Two(metaclass=MetaTwo):
        ...     pass
        ...
        >>> class Both(One, Two):
        ...     pass
        ...
        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
        TypeError: metaclass conflict: the metaclass of a derived class must be a (non-strict) subclass of the metaclasses of all its bases

\- I've never had a problem with other programmers accidentally changing my "constants" (eg. THE_THINGS_IN_ALL_CAPS) and I've never had a problem with other programmers accidentally changing my "private" attributes (eg. _prepended_with_underscore). Naming conventions are good enough for those purposes, in my experience.

\- And when they're not, there's __name_mangling, which is sufficient to avoid the need for a 'final'. Compilers can make use of 'final', which is why final exists in Cython. I'm not sure the purpose in pure Python.

\- There's no need for the distinction between an Abstract class and and Interface. Python already supports multiple inheritance of abstract classes.

<comment><USER5> A little off topic, but it's possible to automatically resolve metaclass conflicts in cases like this (e.g. construct a minimal suitable metaclass on the fly) :)

<comment><USER4> That's OK if the programmer who caused the conflict is the same person who decided to use this lib. If not, that'll be frustrating for one of the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like this is the most anti-pythonic thing I've ever seen.

<comment><USER7> This _is_ the most anti-pythonic thing I've ever seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This will add some overhead for every single call to such wrapped function. If you use that extensively for many classes, won't that be a huge performance degradation?

It would maybe be nice to have a flag so that these wrappings apply only in test or debug mode.

Also, it works e.g. by using `inspect.currentframe().f_back.f_back`. I'm not sure if that is such a clean and stable solution. (See e.g. here: [https://github.com/amitassaraf/lang/blob/master/src/lang/acc...](https://github.com/amitassaraf/lang/blob/master/src/lang/access.py)) E.g. when you add other wrappers around your function, I'm quite sure that this would break.

</comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate the work that went into this. But as a Python guy, this really seems like a solution in search of a problem--a problem that was already identified by the language and addressed.

</comment><comment><USER10> An impressive effort. Nonetheless, I feel like it would be better to warn about these things via static analysis rather than enforcing at run time.

<comment><USER11> I agree - enforcing some of these best practices as a lint step would be more useful than crashing at run time. The benefit of these features in Java/C++ is that they catch problems at compile time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> ??? Go write Java if you want to write Java. Don't try to write Java with Python syntax. Use Python to write Python.

Trying to force the idioms of the programming language you just left onto the programming language you just learned is the classic sign of not having put any effort whatsoever into learning the idioms of the new programming language.

</comment><comment><USER13> You lost me at the second sentence:

> Lang was built using a Java like mindset

I don't really understand why people want to make Python something which is not. Python is not Java, if you want to use Java constructs, use Java! That simple.

</comment><comment><USER14> "We're all consenting adults here" or at least that's what I like to believe...

So yeah, props for the effort, but I don't see it being actually used.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP:

FYI This was just a fun thing to experiment with, never claimed this would be useful or is the right thing to use :)

</comment><comment><USER15> No, just no.

Being more like Java is about the last thing in the world python needs.</comment>


Show HN: Made an AI to Write News Headlines Like Fox News, CNN, Breitbart etc. - <AUTHOR> http://headline.adymatic.com/ <comment><USER2> I picked the sentence "The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite had their highest closings on record Tuesday, marking a resurgence for the stock market after a rout last year hampered its climb." from the first article on WSJ and got some weird results

1) Wall Street Returns After a Year of Slowest

2) Wall Street Resilient on 2016 High Level of Return

3) New York Stock Market Haunts a Return

4) The S&P 500 Is Back, Again, on a Recovery in the Stock Market

5) Wall Street Revamps Wall Street

6) Federal and Securities Markets Leaders Clinch Over Wall Street's Stale Trends

7) Financial Times Crashes Close of Shares, S&P 500 and Nasdaq as Largest to Close

8) Wall Street's Longest-Hired Wall Street Sellers Set Back Year

\- - -

On a separate note, I find the phrase "I made an AI for [x]" incredibly off- putting, but maybe that's just me...

<comment><USER3> >On a separate note, I find the phrase "I made an AI for [x]" incredibly off- putting, but maybe that's just me...

Well, "I made a fancy statistical model for generating text" doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it?

<comment><USER4> If only you had some AI that could generate a catchy headline

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given "Lyra McKee revealed plans to propose to her partner Sara just hours before she was murdered, mourners heard at her funeral", I get

Breitbart: 1) Former Breitbart News executive revealed plans to "marry her dead"

NYT: 1) People Talk of Murder in Twin Peaks

2) Survivors, Conducents

3) Reuniting Family in New NYC in Love Pitch

4) 'Mother of Murder', Murdered In New Jersey, Is Reported as Dead

Guardian: 1) Widow and Mother in Police Killing of New York Times Co. Reporter Tells of Past and Present

2) Dead Teen Photographer's Love Affair Is Cited in Murder Investigation

I mean, I don't think it's working right...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, To test it out just pick a random article from CNN, BBC etc and select the main sentence. This is an actual useful headline generator so it needs something substantial and real-ish else it doesnt generate anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting idea. Is there a description of the tech behind it somewhere? Also, seemed to take a while to generate, not sure if it's getting stressed with visitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. Brutally stressed. 32 people on it now. Running on a single k80. sorry about the delay guys!

<comment><USER7> Suggest you spool up several more GPU servers and throw a load balancer in front.

<comment><AUTHOR> $$$!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This can become a great source of satire I'm sure of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. It's cute people are taking it very seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't get access to the website. It's under too much load. Could you describe the model a bit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please offer your honest feedback! Looking for applications!

<comment><USER10> Have you considered satire as a possible use case?

Could be fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not kidding. This created a fake headline "Trump on Obama 'He is an asshole'".

Had to google to be sure this hadn't happenned.

<comment><USER10> Some of us do not like that comment. I, on the other hand, think it's hilarious!

Keep having fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't seem to work... i tried sentence: President Donald Trump met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at the White House Tuesday to discuss the social media giant, which he has often accused of political bias..

And the CNN and Fox headlines were identical.

<comment><AUTHOR> What did it return? This is just a demonstration. Use for quantity not quality

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Getting a 504 timeout

<comment><AUTHOR> The page seems to load for me. Unfortunately didn't plan the launch too well, so some capacity issues were left unaddressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Crashed

</comment><comment><USER14> And not open-source...</comment>


Walkers and cyclists are using the Covid-19 crisis to swipe road space - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/05/23/walkers-and-cyclists-are-using-the-covid-19-crisis-to-swipe-road-space <comment><USER2> I don't understand why more people aren't demanding walkable cities. Deaths from cars (pollution and accidents) easily exceed that of Covid.</comment>


BizTravel: first public StackExchange beta site - <AUTHOR> http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/

<comment><USER2> biztravel is mostly intended so that I could dogfood StackExchange (<http://stackexchange.com>), which is our white label version of the code that runs StackOverflow.com. StackExchange is currently in invite-only beta. I didn't really expect to get a critical mass of road warriors on that site since I'm not planning to spend very much effort promoting it, but I am interested to see how small a StackOverflow-like knowledge exchange site can be and still get enough traffic to work.

Someone, I'm sure, will take travel Q&A far more seriously than I did, and get someone like Rick Steves or a big travel site like Orbitz or TripAdvisor behind it, and that'll be huge. Either way I'm pretty confident that Jeff Atwood's goal of having knowledge exchanges like StackOverflow replace crappy old PHPBB sites everywhere on the Internet is pretty much inevitable and this will be a huge opportunity to create new communities where old entrenched ones used to be locked in.

<comment><USER3> Joel, I would like to set up a StackOverflow for Graphic Design questions. Could I get access to the beta to do this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm intrigued how they've got people who aren't related to StackOverflow or programming on there already. Someone's already trying to work out what "code" means :-) [http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback- abo...](http://biztravel.stackexchange.com/questions/11/feedback-about-this- site)

Just realized, I'm actually asking a question here.. how would you kick off one of these sorts of sites if you wanted it to become popular? Pre-populate it with a fake community? Get a group of friends to use it in anger?

<comment><USER5> The remants of StackOverflow are kind of an important issue. The guy raises good questions (how do I post maps (say Google Maps) or do other industry specific stuff) and brings up good points about how applicable some stuff is to non-programming sites.

<comment><USER4> If they haven't done it already, I expect a Wordpress style "plugin" system could cater for all this if.... it were an open source (or even self hosted) app. Except, it ain't and I can only see "enterprise" customers finding this app any way attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just went there. #1 question? "What are the must hit brothels on a biz trip to Prague?" Yeah, that's classy right there.

<comment><USER7> Sex!!??? On the Internet??!!! Well I never!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting pricing model. No free option and a premium (per-server based) model for on premise. Very different from what you usually see for web-based services. I think it might work.

Planning to try it out.

<comment><USER2> Dharmesh, the free option in a freemium model usually exists to spread the word, but we have StackOverflow.com to spread the word. And most of these sites people are building will have big audiences, and those audiences are getting it free, so we don't really need a free entry-level option just to get our first customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to see how similar it looks, to the pixel. Perhaps the framework doesn't leave much room for customization.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's partly the framework, and partly because Joel threw this together on a Friday afternoon. The only thing customized on this site is the colors and the logo, but you can also add blocks of HTML in a bunch of places where ads are usually shown.

<comment><USER2> And of course you can override CSS, which we didn't bother to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a big fan of the current color scheme.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything in particular? As Joel said, this is mostly a beta testing site, but feedback on the colors would be useful for picking some nice preset color schemes.

<comment><USER11> That blue used for backgrounds (i.e. the login box) is a bit too saturated and dark. Coupled with the dark blue text, they fail in colour contrast checks <http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nj6/colour-contrast-analyser> . I suggest knocking it back to something like #B5D2E4. The greens for answered questions are a bit dark too and could be changed to #afff4b for accepted answers and #D1FF7E for answered. Here's a screenshot with those colours firebugged in <http://skitch.com/dylanfm/b6nk3/biztravel> .</comment></comment></comment>


Blind patient reads words stimulated directly onto the retina - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/blind-patient-reads-words-stimulated-directly-onto-the-retina

<comment><USER2> Going blind is a huge fear of mine - the sooner we have mechanical replacement eyes the better...

<comment><USER3> Weirdly enough, I fear losing my hands more. Even thought it is far less likely.

<comment><USER4> Getting bad RSI is effectively loosing your hands... Could be just as likely, though not necessarily as temporary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for this. My brother has RP. I am contacting this company now.

Thank you. =)</comment>